


Little Golden Eagle

by Cards_Slash



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, M/M, Malik starts off as an eagle, djinn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-07 02:07:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1881033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malik is an eagle that finds himself falling in love with a human.  It seems like a stupid and hopeless situation until he finds a Djinn that makes a bet with him.  The Djinn will turn him human and If he can get Altair to fall in love with him in a week then he can stay human and have one wish but if he can't then he has to serve the Djinn for the rest of his life.</p><p>It should have been an easy bet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i couldn't think of a different title. i suck. i'm sorry.

It started with the human—gawky, lanky and awkward—prone to fits of stupidity and sudden loss of coordination. Gravity, at times, seemed to take the human by surprise and drag him to the ground with remorseless efficiency. Other times, it was only impatience that drove the human into the path of great resistance. The sounds the human made in the center of a fight he could not truly hope to win were guttural grunts and simpering hisses of fresh-white pain. At first the bloodshed was only amusing and then every blossom of red-arterial blood the human drew was a mark of pride. Still, the human was possessed of mortal stupidity, limited by the meager agility of his arms and legs and incapable of flight.

Despite these failings, Malik kept the name the human gave him. It clung to his feathers in the long hours of the day and caught between his talons like blood.

The human found him on a wooden perch at Masyaf when they were both fledglings searching for a place in the vastness of their world. The human had been smaller then—much more a child than Malik—and he had the strangest joy at finding Malik again-and-again in the same perch looking out over the training grounds and the whole of the tight little village that grew strong in Masyaf’s shadow.

Malik had tried to scare the human away but it came again and again, moving itself ever closer to Malik until they had discovered a comfortable closeness. The human did not try to touch him but crouched at his side and looked out at the world under him. There was something distinctly-familiar in his eyes that was lacking in the blank-eyes of the many other humans.

“I’ve started calling you Malik,” the human said to him, “only to myself. It seemed better than ‘bird’.”

\--

His human was faster than the others. He was not stronger but better suited to his body. His human was a predator slowly evolving into his fully realized form.

Once, Malik had wondered at the loyalty others of his kind had shown for one another. Their worries had seemed so transient and their alliances superfluous to him. The whole world lay beneath them and the other eagles he had flown with were limited only by the distance they were willing to travel and the mates they chose. Malik had run from it—the monotony of instinct—but it found him all the same.

Malik followed his human wherever he went. He watched him spill the blood of lesser predators. He watched him grow tall and strong. 

His human brought him mice when he climbed the tower at Masyaf and sat on the sturdy wooden perch after sunset. “I thought you’d enjoy it,” his human said when Malik made a quick snack out of the meager offering. 

Malik brought his human a hyrax the next time he found him starving on the road between a mission and the safety of the castle. Malik dropped it at the human’s side and took a moment to appreciate the pink-shock on the human’s face before it lapsed into something between disbelief and gratitude. Malik circled him twice to be sure the human understood he was meant to eat the offering.

\--

His human did not try to capture him and Malik felt that it was a sign of mutual respect. The other humans that had seen him perched high atop the towers of Masyaf had looked at him with greedy eyes. One or two of them had tried to catch him with nets and quick-grabbing hands but Malik had simply spread his wings and flown away. The one time he had nearly been captured—a well thrown net and a moment of carelessness brought on by close observation of his human—Malik had let out a sound he had known himself capable of making. It tore out of his throat in a moment of panic as the fast-beating of his wings failed to save him from the victorious human that ran forward to claim the prize his net had won him.

Malik remembered it clearly, remembered the fast-fury of his human’s feet running across the hard ground. He remembered the sound of bone-impacting-bone as his human attacked the lesser one and the blood that hit the ground not so far from where Malik was caught. Oh he remembered his human in glorious victory with blood on his knuckles and in his mouth and his furious spit of words. 

More than anything, he remembered the gentle-hands of his human lifting the edge of the net with great caution. 

\--

At first, Malik assured himself that he was merely returning favors. He followed his human out into conflicts and flew into his path when his human was going far too close to danger. It was a fair exchange for the freedom his human had restored to him.

He found a series of perches spread across the vast land that his human travelled. Each time he found another high point to watch the motion of the city beneath him, his human found him and crouched at his side with a thankful motion of his head. But it was the smile on his lips that brought Malik time-and-time again. Loyalty earned loyalty, after all.

His human brought him tasty morsels of meat at Masyaf and sat with his back in a slump and kicked his foot over the edge of the tower as they watched the sun drifting down into the horizon. Malik returned the favor with easily-caught meat he delivered to his human whenever the man was out and away from the many eyes of many men that wouldn’t understand. His human did not take his gifts with any arrogance but with a genuine appreciation for the effort retrieving the meat. “You are a fine hunter, Malik,” he told him.

\--

Eagles were not incapable of love. Malik’s own parents had loved one another with a practical (albeit blind) devotion. Their love was the machine of the mutual survival but it was also based in something far less logical than the simple drive to survive and procreate. They had despaired over him (surely) when he had not returned to them but there would have been others they coddled and kept warm in their well-built nest. Malik-did-not understand the nature of humans so well as he would like, but he knew the nature of love well enough to know it when he saw it.

His human fell into love with the same lack of grace that he had once been fallen over his feet with. It must have come over him by accident because Malik had not seen any of the signs that it was happening before he found himself perched on the end of a watery dock while his human stood at his side with a defeated slump to his shoulders. The woman that his human had chased across so many cities was far-away now, taken by a boat out and beyond into deep water. 

\--

It was obvious (rather painfully obvious) that his human was not well-liked among the other humans. They were petty, lesser beings (at best) incapable of the speed and lethality of his own human. Their spite seemed born of their jealousy but for all of their trying, they could not break his human. 

\--

There was only one, as far as Malik had found, that brought a sense of subordinate silence to his human. One among the whole race of men that challenged his human as the most dominant predator. The old man was not a physical threat and therefore not a threat that Malik could understand. The man spoke—talked and talked—and his human listened to him without fail. Sometimes the words filled his human with courage and arrogance and sometimes they robbed him of peace. 

On those nights, his human sat at his side and picked at the stitches in his clothes. His thoughts turned dark and Malik could not quiet the instinctive flutter of his wings or the shift of his body from one side to the other. His wings were inadequate for offering comfort and his throat and beak were not made for the words of humans. When he did attempt speaking the sounds were soft and ridiculous but they always-always made his human smile fondly at him.

“Surely, you would not have followed me so long if I were a fool.”

Malik might have told his human he was absolutely a fool and that somehow it simply did not matter anymore. But the best he could do was a motion with his head and planting his body close enough that his human could reach out with his hand and rub the backs of his fingers down the front of Malik’s body. And Malik reached down to nip at his knuckles and the raw little chuckle that Altair let out made something inside of his body twist around in an unfamiliar way.

\--

Humans had burdened themselves with heaps of unnecessary things. They’d built social systems and religions and stored away knowledge from things long past on pages in books kept in libraries. They clung to these things, to the known cycle of things and the expectations of their behavior. They lived by a code of law that had no solid footing against the basest need for survival.

Eagles were not burdened with religion. They were not concerned with taboo. They did not conform to arbitrary laws. There were no sacred texts and no unforgiveable crimes. When Malik was still in his mother’s nest he had killed the weaker brother who had hatched with him and there had been no retribution for the act. Survival-demanded-strength.

But Malik had lived among the humans long-enough now to hear the whispers of other things, stranger things than the men who walked on two legs and made war over ideas. Malik had listened to the talk of Allah, he’d cocked his head at the whispers of the tricky-creatures (Djinn, they were called) and the wonders they could work. Malik had perched outside of the old man’s window and listened to him mumble on about greater-powers.

All of these things would have been lost eventually (as many things Malik heard were often lost) save for how his human had grown so old that he could not control his urge to mate. It was a matter of inevitability (even Malik knew that) but his human rubbing against the other-lesser-humans brought a fire-like-pain into Malik’s body that he could not name.

\--

Malik’s anger made him infamous with the little humans that had taken to throwing rocks at him whenever they saw him. He dove at them with his talons outstretched and they scattered like frightened little voles—ducking for the nearest bit of cover. The older humans had learned to leave him be but they still watched him with solemn-worry. He had tore into their bodies with the length of his talons once-or-twice and they knew him by the stretch of his wings and the hate in his eyes.

It was only _his_ human that could not be taught to leave him be. No, his human climbed the tower and sat at his side. His human said, “why are you so mad? I cannot protect you if you are going to terrorize them. Al Mualim will ordered you killed and I cannot defy him.” When his human reached out his hand toward Malik it was a gesture so sorely needed and so wholly unwelcome that Malik was not sure what his reaction would be until he found himself biting at the human’s skin to get at the taste of his blood all the while pushing his body up against the long sleeve of his assassin’s uniform.

“I could not bear to lose you, stupid bird,” his human said to him. “Whatever has ruffled your feathers, let it pass.” He stroked his fingers down Malik’s back and looked at him with such unashamed fondness. It was a look worth more than the useless sweaty grunting he had offered the other human he chose to mate with. Malik bit his knuckle one last time even if his human could not understand why.

\--

If the humans noticed him following along after them while they told outlandish tales about Djinn (tricky things made of fire was all Malik really understood) they did not go screaming to the old man about it. Malik trailed the sound of superstition through the village and all along the long path between Masyaf and the cities were his human went to hunt and kill. 

So that, when Malik went looking the Djinn was not so difficult to find. The creature wore a human skin as it wandered around Acre but it was not made of human-things. Malik saw it easily for what it was (tricky thing made of fire) and spent a few hours following it while his human busied himself with the mission he’d been tasked with. 

Malik lost the Djinn in the market and retreated to his high perch to nurse the disappointment he felt at his own inadequacy. He expected Altair to find him by late-afternoon when he’d verified his target and dispatched him. He would climb the tower with the smell of blood and death clinging to his white robes and hide-out-of-sight until the ringing bells died down enough to offer him a measure of anonymity. 

Malik had not expected the Djinn to rise up the side of the tower like a bit of smoke, coiling itself around the narrow path at the very top and slithering from a snake-made-of-smoke back into something nearly-human looking. The Djinn, when it finished reforming, looked a bit like a man with eyes far too brilliantly green to be a true human. Its skin was far hotter than any human’s and its body did not move with the same sense of constraint as the others. 

Its voice, when it spoke sounded watery and musical. It said, “poor little bird, something has broken your heart. Why don’t you tell me what has happened?” It leaned across the low wall and cocked its head to the side to look at him as if it expected Malik could really answer him. “Malik? That is a strange name for a bird.” Then a pause as it narrowed its eyes at him and a smile drew up its thin lips into a grin that was far-too-pleased to be genuine. “You are in love with a _human_ ,” the Djinn said, “not just any human but an _Assassin_.” Then it laughed and the mocking joy in the sound shook the things whole body apart at the seams, breaking its joints and sending little puffs of blackened smoke rising briefly before it snapped together again. The mirth did not falter on the Djinn’s face but it settled into something less offensive when Malik ruffled his feathers and spread his wings in annoyance. “Do not mistake me, little eagle. Assassins are perhaps one of the most useful of humans. We all have to choose what side we believe in, I suppose. I tried to stay out of it but the war drags us all in eventually.”

In all his years among the people, Malik had heard-of but not yet-seen the ‘war’ with the same degree of impressed horror as they had. War was nothing but a fight for territory, the strongest would emerge victorious and the weakest would slink away to find another nesting place. 

The Djinn’s smile grew fatter as it seemed to deflate in place, arms crossed over the low wall and chin against its arms. The thick-dark smoke that seeped through the wrinkles in its skin smelled so strongly of fresh-burnt kindling that it irritated Malik’s eyes. “Not this war, little eagle. The crusades are a lark, an entertaining bit of action but hardly worth taking note of. You should not concern your small mind with such things. A bird has no use for human wars.”

So Malik waved his wings at it. It was the right of all living things to choose their own paths, to decide what would be of use to them and what matters to concern themselves with. Malik did not care for-or-about war but he would not sit idly by if his human was to be consumed by the foolishness of so many others. 

“Now there is something useful,” the Djinn said, “something truly rare in the world. You _love_ this human. You love him beyond reason but not blindly. He is not worth the sacrifice you would make for him, little eagle. I have seen him.” The Djinn waved his hand in the air and a bit of black smoke showed his human’s face. “Altair, they call him. He is petty and arrogant. Your love is wasted on him.”

Eagles were not made to contain the sort of emotion that had set a fire in Malik’s breast. He flew at the Djinn before he could fully explain the reason behind it. His talons scraped through its fiery skin and its blood flowed like fire itself, racing in burning rivulets. But the thing turned to smoke all around him and reassembled itself at Malik’s back, perched easily out on the wooden ledge where his human (Altair) looked out at the city.

“Fine, fine. I apologize.” But there was no remorse in the Djinn’s grinning face. “Your faith in him intrigues me—and I am not so easily intrigued, little eagle. I have lived for such a long time now, slipping in and out of this miserable human world where things are brief and ugly. I have lost the fondness I once had for these human creatures—and yet you, one of Allah’s most magnificent creations, have fallen in love with the dirty little clay men.”

The words dragged on too long and Malik lost track of the motion and meaning of them. He knew only that the Djinn was mocking him (taunting him, perhaps). 

“We will make a bet,” the Djinn said. “I will make you a mortal man for one week. If you can make the human love you in that time, I will grant you one wish. When you fail, when you truly understand what despicable things your human is made of, you will leave him and serve me for the rest of my life.”

Malik cocked his head to the side, tried to sort through the words, tried to sort through the meaning behind them (and the trick, there was always a trick) but the fire in his chest was burning through every bit of sense that he had been born with. The Djinn sat and smiled at him. Malik moved back over toward him, stood close enough to smell the irritable smoke that rose through the thing’s skin. He thought, _yes_ as loudly as he could manage. 

“This will be quite entertaining,” the Djinn said. Then it reached out toward Malik its hand burning in a sudden blue fire. Mortal-panic-and-blind-fear swept through Malik just before the world went suddenly and completely black.


	2. Chapter 2

_**day one:** _

Malik woke up in a storm of things: a barrage of sight-sound-sensation that left him with his hands (hands!) clamped over his protruding human ears and his eyes clenched closed so tightly there was a sudden explosion of colors behind the lids. His skin (skin!) felt as if it had been sanded down to the red-pulpy under part. There was a sound, a single, faltering sound that rose and fell in intensity so close to him that he thought he might go deaf from it. 

Oh and it took him such a long time to realize the sound was coming from his human throat. It was an uneven tone, twisting and writhing in the air at the monumental confusion of sudden birth. Malik kicked his legs with uncoordinated effort and clawed into the soft skin behind his ears with the blunted tips of his fingers until he felt something wet and painful. 

“You should be quieter,” the Djinn’s voice whispered through the scream. “They’ll think you’ve lost your mind. They have places for people like that you know.” Then he was blowing away on a breeze, flittering out of view as a puff of blackened smoke.

Malik blinked-and-blinked until the world cleared-around-him and still the colors and the shapes did not make sense. The limit of his vision was nearly blinding and the sudden forced change to his perspective was dizzying. The walls that had once seemed so flimsy and impermanent from above were like mountains towering above him. His body—bigger than it had ever been—was a curled little shell that left him feeling miniscule compared to the world. 

His wings were gone and in their place the awkward sprawl of arms and the odd shape of human hands. His fingers and his palm were tacky with sweat as he touched them here-and-there against his skin stretched across his new bones. Every place he touched tingled with sudden awareness until the unbearable feeling of being _exposed_ drove him to his feet in a mad scramble of limbs.

That is how he found his human, all at once and through no effort but unfortunate luck. He stood on shaking legs and wide-spread arms (meant to balance himself) and his human came around a corner at full speed and ran into him. They toppled over, Malik grasping at his humans’ body in an attempt to save himself and his human with a squawk of surprise. 

Altair (his human) rolled to the side, dug his hands into Malik’s arms and pried him free. For one brief second he looked right-at-Malik and the difference in his face seen through these human eyes was almost disorienting. When Malik was an eagle, Altair’s attractiveness had been based solely on his actions. Eagles were not made to appreciate human’s gawky and oddly flat bodies. But humans-loved-humans and Altair’s face was something infinitely more interesting to him now than it had been only that morning. He was a handsome man (surly, though, always frowning) and Malik had only half worked through that realization and the implications of this new body before Altair shoved him away. His human was moving to stand up and Malik couldn’t make a single word come through his throat (only sounds, soft and ridiculous like his eagle throat made) but his hands grasped at the length of Altair’s white robes and dragged him back a step when he tried to leave.

Altair did not spare him a second glance but kicked him in the chest and pulled himself to freedom—darting quickly across the empty ground and up the side of the insurmountable walls. He pulled himself over the edge of the roof and up-up into the sky.

Malik lay sprawled in the dirt with his back arched in a starburst of sudden breathless pain.

\--

Humans did not wander through their world naked. They were burdened with many layers of clothing and Malik had been (re)born without any. When the pain from being kicked subsided, he managed to make it up to his unsteady feet again. The pain of his bare soles against the uneven ground was enough to make his eyes go wet and he could not figure out why. Every step he took was a fresh hell of sensation until he found himself clinging to the wall and stay as still as he possibly could to relieve the pain. 

After a moment, the ache burnt down to a dull sort of feeling. Then he was aware of the heat of the day all around his body—the pervasive way it clung to the inside of his thighs and gathered with damp intensity beneath his arms. Every bit of his body felt awkward to him and smelled unpleasant (even to himself). Still, he would not last very long in this world if he could not find some way to clothe himself. 

He picked his way around the wall until he came upon a ladder and pulled himself up-and-up with slippery palms and fingers and unsure feet. When Malik finally reached the roof he crept across it on bare hands and knees toward the garden at the top that provided shade (at least). Malik did what he had seen Altair do many times before, he rolled into the garden over the low wall and lay on his back in the soggy interior, legs in a sprawl to relieve the heat and feet braced against the low wooden sides. A breeze blew the curtains around but the sun could not sneak far enough inside to light fire against his flesh again. 

It was cooler and dark inside. The day around him was quiet enough to allow him to think. 

\--

The bells were loud-as-ever late in the afternoon. The city itself seemed to shift around him from a placid, sluggish beast to some great rabid animal. All of the gentle sounds turned into shrill peaks of noise as every man-woman-child went suddenly into a highly alert state. They were screaming out reports of an assassin and the guards were running-running to catch the phantoms of a man they had never had any hope of locating. 

Malik listened to the commotion with his hands over his ears. It did not seem as ridiculous to him now as it had when he was an eagle looking down at the insanity of so many humans. Now the sound of the bells and the report of so many running feet left his chest feeling tight and airy with a sensation of mortal panic that he could not ease. 

\--

After, there was a lull of sound that afforded Malik a brief (sorely needed) moment of nothingness. He did not hurt, he was not burdened with anxiety, he was no exposed, and he was not confused but simply alive. For a span of several minutes he thought of nothing-at-all but the strangeness of his limbs folded as they were. He breathed and he lay still and he listened to the dullness of silence after such loudness.

Then, he thought of Altair at the top of the tower he surely had climbed expecting Malik to be there. He thought of Altair with tense aggravation in his every-movement as he picked his way across rooftops toward the grate where the other humans in white stayed. They were lesser-beings than Altair but that failing did not make them entirely useless. 

Malik rolled back up onto his feet and slipped out through the side of the garden. The sun was lower now, the whole of the city seemed to be covered in long yawning shadows as he tried to figure out exactly-where-he-was. Everything seemed different (insurmountable even) when he was tied by gravity to the face of the miserable little muddy planet. He ripped a curtain from the garden he’d crouched in and tied it around his waist to afford him something like cover before he started walking across the roof.

\--

Eagles felt fear, surely, but it was not fear the way this human body felt it. Malik had been an apex predator—easily the most dangerous animal in his world. There were few (if any) that were more dangerous than he was in the portion of the world he was born in. And when he left it behind and found himself at Masyaf, there was nothing that challenged him as the most dominant (save for the humans, and Altair had quickly removed them as a threat). This fear was far greater than the momentary fears of his time as an eagle. This was a true panic for his own mortality as he walked across slim wooden planks and jumped the narrow distances between buildings.

His body was awkward and unknown but it had retained the swiftness and strength of his eagle-body. The motions required for walking were foreign to his thinking mind but some deeper instinctive part of him knew how to make the body work correctly. 

The sky had nearly gone black before Malik found the grate that Altair had often through after a successful mission. It rattled under Malik’s bare feet, the sparse light from an interior door illuminated the outline of a body lying across a stack of pillows. Malik stepped up to the open edge of the grate and crouched down at it. His fingers slid easily through the open holes and he clenched his hands in hope that they would not let him fall straightaway. 

The moment his feet left the ground was a fresh-burn of terror that nearly made him bleat out another of those embarrassing sounds. He clenched his teeth against it and concentrated on the unfamiliar pull at his shoulders as gravity dragged at him as he hung from the grate. When Malik released his hold on the edge he fell, landed only briefly on his feet before he tipped sideways and ended up knocking his head against the fountain at the head of the room.

Momentary blackness swirled across his vision and awareness dimmed to a single point of pain on the back of his head that felt wet-hot and pulsing. Malik’s body tightened on itself and both of his hands were grabbing at the source of the pain in a way that did nothing at all to alleviate it. The only thing he could hear through the pulse of agony (could pain be worse than this? It was unthinkable) was the faint scrap of metal on stone. 

It was an act of sheer will power that peeled his eyes open and pried his hands away from the source or the hurt. He managed to draw in a breath just before Altair was suddenly leaning across his body with a short blade in his hand. His eyes had the inhuman gleam in them that had been one of the first things to draw Malik to him. Like this, with Malik spread out on his back with only the scratchy bit of curtain still covering him and Altair armed-and-unknown over him there was nothing attractive about the gleam.

“Who are you?” Altair said. 

Malik opened his mouth (thought, _I am Malik_ ) but the only sounds that he managed to produce were garbled wet sounds that were nothing at all like words. When his hands touched at Altair’s body, the thickness of the robes did nothing to hide the solid strength under them and Malik’s whole body seemed to lose focus at the realization. 

“What’s this?” the Rafiq asked. He was an older man, sturdy with stature and sure of himself. He stood in the doorway with a curious tilt to his head. As he stepped closer, Altair relaxed back away from Malik and in doing so knocked Malik’s hands away from him. 

“He came through the grate,” Altair said with a dismissive motion of his hand. “Probably a wandering simpleton that happened upon us by chance. He doesn’t look like a threat.” He sheathed his blade and dropped back onto the cushions that Malik had often seen him sleeping on. 

Malik sat up enough to frown at the words—he knew enough of how the humans work to know that if he were branded a simpleton he would lose whatever chance he had. 

“I think you are wrong,” the Rafiq said. “Come now, tell us who you are and why you’re here.”

Altair’s lips curled up into a smirk that was the only visible part of his face after he pulled the hood up. He said nothing, at least, just motioned with his arms as if to declare himself correct and then slumped backward to sleep.

Malik sighed. 

“Well, that is a problem. Best that we take care of the bigger problem first. Come with me, I’ll find you something to wear and something to eat.” The Rafiq motioned him inward, through the narrow doorway and back into the rooms lit by lamps. 

\--

Clothing was a problem if only because Malik had never paid very much attention at all to how humans went about putting it on. He remembered in vivid (angry) detail exactly how Altair and the other human he chose to mate moved aside the necessary clothing. He remembered Altair’s sincere joy at dumping water over his naked body. He could not recall how the clothing went on.

The old Rafiq cleared his throat, “have you forgotten how to dress yourself?” The question was not as accusatory as Malik expected it to be. If anything, it seemed more concerned than angry. The relief Malik felt at finding something kind in the human world that had (thus far) given him nothing but unpleasant feelings made his whole body sag in place. He held onto the scraps of clothing with useless fingers and nodded his head. The Rafiq made a quiet noise and came closer. “First, I will assist you with this and then I would like to look at your head. It’s possible you suffered some sort of injury.” He made quick-and-efficient work of covering Malik’s naked body. 

When they were out in the main room again, the Rafiq had him lay his head down across the tall counter as he wove his fingers through the thick black hair that covered the top of his head. His fingertips were gentle as they probed at his scalp until he came upon the tender place where Malik had hit his head on the fountain. “Hmm,” The Rafiq said. “It is curious that you do not remember who you are and yet you were able to find us.”

Malik said nothing and made no motions of understanding. He simply stood when the Rafiq released him and toyed with his sleeves and the strange feeling of something foreign covering every part of his body. While he had not been hungry (not that he knew, at least) before, as soon as food was put in front of him his whole body seemed to double over with ravenous need. Chewing was an obnoxious task when he wanted the food in his stomach quicker but after a few terrible seconds of choking, quickly because an obvious necessity. 

“When you are finished, you may sleep out where you entered. Just keep your distance from Altair, he is not fond of…well, he is not fond of anyone. Do not give him an excuse to vent his anger on you.” Then the Rafiq wished him a good night and retired to his own room.

Malik did not finish all of the food he was given but enough of it to satisfy himself (as much as he could stand to chew) before he crept back out into the room where Altair slept. He had perched himself over the man often enough to know what he looked like in his sleep and how his body looked when he was only pretending to sleep. This, as all things, was different to him when observed through his human eyes. Altair was still but he wasn’t asleep and this body Malik had been given shivered with the knowledge that it was too-close to something far-more-dangerous than itself. Still, a nervous twitch in his chest had him scooting closer.

Closer, closer—until he was close enough to see the wrinkles in Altair’s clothing illuminated by the moon. Closer, until he was close enough to see the ragged edge of the scar that ran across his lips (lax now, neither smiling nor frowning) and the stubble that was growing thick on his jaw and cheeks. Close enough that he could count the even-breaths as Altair lay still and pretended to sleep. Close enough to smell the days of sweat and dirt that clung tight around the man.

Close enough so that when Altair opened his eyes (suddenly, far too suddenly) the shock of it knocked Malik back off his unsteady feet and had him landing on his ass like a fool. Altair followed after him, the intent and precision in his motions making Malik go flat against the ground in a desperate (instinctive) bid to remove himself from a potential threat. Altair followed him, leaned over his body again with an arrogant smile catching the corners of his lips. 

For a moment, Altair simply loomed over him. Then he relaxed backward, lay himself out across the cushions—after being sure to take them all—and he let out a huff of breath. 

Malik lay with his back against the stone and his heart beating hard against his strange-new chest. His brain was an agony of unanswerable doubts that were ultimately useless against the raw wound of _feeling_ in his chest. Oh, because he could touch-and-taste-and-feel Altair in every single human-way and it was oh-so-much-more than anything he could have imagined. It was _overwhelming_ the way the doubts-about-what he’d done were overwhelming and the weight of those things crushed him into a shallow grave of sleep filled with confusing blurs of color and sound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let us hope Malik's second day goes somewhat better...


	3. Chapter 3

_**day two:** _

Sleep was not often a friend to Altair (especially not when he needed it most). His sleep was riddled with blood spots and the long-slow creak of the gallows heavy with bodies. Exhaustion made him clumsy but confusion and the-creeping-black-fear of nightmares drove him away from his bed. He slipped out through the grate in the ceiling of the bureau, eased it closed again and found himself staring down at the idiot that had fallen through the ceiling earlier. The moon was a slim figure in the sky, the darkness was deep and the light was slim but Altair was sure he could make out the very barest of a scowl on the man’s face. 

Altair sneered back at him. The unknown, unnamed idiot that dared to disapprove of _him_ when he was so useless he could not even speak. The indignant anger carried him across the hushed rooftops, through the city to the tallest point. He climbed in the dark—stretched his arms by memory and gripped at the places his fingers knew so well—and pulled himself up over the wooden plank. Malik should have been there because he was simply always there. 

The stupid bird stood there with his wings shivering against his body and his head cocked to the side in amused disapproval. The sound of the bells was a chorus of Altair’s victory but the dying shout of the guards hunting him did little to earn him Malik’s approval. The stupid, stupid bird was easily more judgmental and less tolerant of his methods than the many teachers he’d driven away in his youth.

It should have been the same on this day, Altair collapsing into the shallow hiding place just beyond the wooden planks. The bird muttering his puppy-mewls of reproach as Altair scratched at the feathers on his chest. The skin of Altair’s knuckles was riddled and pocked with the scars from so many chunks of flesh taken by the eagle’s sharp beak. 

_I chose you,_ is what the bird always seemed to be saying. _I chose you when I could have chosen any human in all of the world. I could have chosen_ any creature _and I chose you._

The embarrassment was not that Altair had climbed the tower just to run his hand across the grooves in the wood the eagle had left with the length of his talons, or that he slid into the shallow hiding place in search of (comfort) sleep. It was that Altair had gotten attached to the stupid bird in the first place, that he’d ever bothered to take note of it, that he’d started recognizing it and trusted that it would not stray. 

“Stupid bird,” Altair said into the air. But he meant _don’t be dead_.

\--

Malik woke at the sound of Altair moving around. He lay still at first, let the man climb out through the ceiling and then sat up to watch how he closed the bureau after himself. The action made no sense, it was completely removed from anything the human had ever done. He sought shelter and peace here after a mission well-done. He was known to gorge on the available food and sleep in a graceless heap after so many days of little sleep on the road. 

Nothing should have woken Altair from the stupor of success and yet he was running across the roof—out and away. Malik sat in the room (alone) and pondered over the aberration until his body’s discomfort drove him to the pile of pillows Altair had just left. They were still warm-here-and-there from where the man had slept and Malik could not control the way he curled around those spots.

The answer came to him in the last fleeting moments of wakefulness. Altair-had-never (not once ever) run from the safety of this bureau in all the time that Malik had watched him but Malik had never not-once-ever not _been there_ to watch him. He was here now but Altair could not see him, did not know it was him because he was still looking for a _bird_.

\--

Altair could have left the city without returning to the bureau (and retrospectively that might have been a superior plan) but morning came and his eagle had still not returned. There were more than enough starving people in Acre that would have gladly eaten the flesh of anything they could catch. It was possible (if not probable) that Malik had been taken down by a lucky shot. 

The thought drove Altair back to the Rafiq.

“I see you saw fit to open the bureau yourself last night,” the Rafiq said when Altair entered the room. The mute idiot was sitting in the room with him, frowning his way through another meager meal. His jaws moved with gross exaggeration. “I don’t suppose you know why we sometimes close the bureau. Of course,” the man went on, “you are Altair, perhaps you are aware and do not care.”

“Be quiet old man,” Altair said. “Speak to your contacts in the city, ask them to search for anyone that might have killed an eagle in the past two days. It had golden brown feathers. I will return to Masyaf—send word to me with what you find.”

The Rafiq was impotent in anger (as many men were) as he clenched his teeth together for a matter of moments. When his voice found him again he said, “should I chose to honor this strange and ridiculous request; what reason should I tell them to risk their own safety to find this eagle’s killer?”

Now and again, Altair’s body moved before he could think better of it. Al Mualim said it was both a blessing and a curse—more often a blessing—because it gave him strength and bravery that no average man possessed. It also led him straight into the path of greatest resistance. Altair grabbed the Rafiq by the robes and pulled him forward so his body banged against the counter and his face blanched in something akin to fear-and-embarrassment. Altair said, “because the eagle was mine.”

The idiot mute hit him in the back of the head with a plate. The strength of the blow surprised him (the blow itself surprised him) but it was the perfectly-entitled look on the idiot’s face that stayed Altair’s immediate reaction. The man looked at him as if Altair were hardly better than an idiot himself. And when Altair’s fist did not uncurl from the Rafiq’s clothes quickly enough, the mute idiot slapped his hand like an insolent child. 

Altair slapped the idiot across the face with the back of his hand, did nothing at all to lessen the strength of the blow (only returning the favor) and found himself unpleasantly disappointed when the man jerked to the side, knocked into a table and squawked a noise of pain but did _not fall_. Oh no, the man stood back up with one hand wiping blood away from his face and murder in his oddly bright eyes. 

The Rafiq made a noise like a laugh that was cut off into a short stop when Altair turned to look at him. He opened his mouth to repeat his demand but the idiot slammed into his body with no regard for his own safety and threw both into the counter so that Altair’s body tipped over it and momentum flipped them both across the top of it and dropped them into the narrow space behind it.

\--

There were no humans that did not owe his human the highest level of respect; this was the truth that Malik had learned as an eagle. Altair was the fastest-and-the-strongest and the _best_. Oh-and-yet, he had abandoned Malik (he had not recognized him) and he had insulted him and he had threatened him. Altair had not shown him even the most momentary of kindness that he had given so freely to the eagle-Malik-had-been. It was this other man, this Rafiq, who had given him clothes and food. It was the Rafiq who offered an explanation for Malik’s ignorance. It was the Rafiq who sat with him and tried to sort out the truth about where Malik had come from.

“You cannot write either?” the Rafiq asked. Malik shook his head no. “And you do not remember where you have come from?” (Yes, he remembered. He came from far-and-beyond this miserable little human city. Out where the rocks and the sky and the ground were still free.) Malik shook his head no. “Well, first I think we should give you a name and then perhaps you can travel with Altair back to Masyaf. It will not be a pleasant journey but he will take you along if he believes it is an order from Al Mualim.”

The old man that lived in the tall castle, the only human who had ever challenged Altair as the most dominant predator. 

The Rafiq had looked at him for a long while before he said, “we will call you Kadar, I think. You remind me very much of a young boy I once knew with the same name.” 

All this before Altair had even bothered himself with returning (which the Rafiq pointed out, might not have happened at all). And the moment thrill at hearing Altair demand the Rafiq find out what happened to his eagle (to _Malik_ ) aside, the anger and the mistreatment Altair laid on the Rafiq set a fire to some dormant part of Malik’s new human body.

He hit Altair because Altair deserved it but Altair hit him simply because he could and the brutal coldness of his hand across Malik’s face made that point perfectly clear. The dismissive derision in his face when he looked down at Malik from his slightly superior height was as painful a blow as the physical one. 

Oh-but-Malik was not some timid little human reared on the rules of society and taught to fear-and-obey. No, Malik was born out-and-beyond, raised on the laws of survival of the fittest and there was no fear (not even in this human body) in the whole of him that was greater than his will to survive at all costs. When he attacked Altair it was not just but wrathful. 

The two of their bodies rolled with awkward-hard bumps and jabs and landed on the opposite side of the counter. The Rafiq at their heads was saying words (always words with these humans) but Altair was speaking with the fluid motion of his body. His attacks were driven by wounded pride, a blitz of motions that had taken down so many humans before. Malik leaned back from the worst of the blows, balled up his fist and punched Altair in the face hard enough it jarred through his own body like a ricochet of pain. 

The fight might have lasted longer save for Altair’s hand on the back of his neck and the cold-metal-blade pressed against his throat. Altair was half upright, held in place by the strength of Malik’s back, held away by Malik’s hand folded over the bony part of his shoulders. There was blood on his face, tricking out of his nose and a split in his lip that was plumping up red. 

“You will regret the day you made me an enemy,” Altair hissed at him.

Malik closed two fingers around one of the thin throwing knives that stuck up out of their sheaths at Altair’s back as he stared back at the man. This hateful creature that he loved. The Rafiq was talking again (always always talking) but Altair did not falter in his stare or the steady press of the blade against Malik’s skin. 

If he’d had the voice, Malik might have said, _pay attention to your surroundings, Altair._ But there were no words in his throat so he tightened his grip on the knife and stabbed it into Altair’s left arm where the greatest depth of meat was. The blade did not go easily, did not sink in very far but it was enough to get the metal away from Malik’s throat. Altair howled in unexpected pain and Malik threw himself back and away from the man.

“Stop!” the Rafiq shouted. 

\--

Level heads did not prevail. Altair did not grant this unspeaking idiot a reprieve simply because he was commanded to. He submitted to having his wound treated and listened to the lecture that accompanied it not because he was possessed of a sudden humility or respect but because he could not kill the mute so openly. (He could have, surely, save for how the Rafiq had decided the mute was most likely a brother and therefore protected from Altair’s mortal wrath.)

“Perhaps you should consider this a lesson,” the Rafiq said. “You have underestimated your opponent too often, Altair. You think this man is simple only because he cannot speak and he still outsmarted you.”

“I do not require a lesson from you,” Altair said. When his wound was cleaned, stitched and wrapped, Altair dressed himself again and picked up the offensive little knife that the mute had used against him. The tip was still red with his blood and the sight made him angrier than it should have. “If you believe this man is truly an assassin than I will take him back to Al Mualim with me. The Mentor will know what should be done.”

Surely, the Rafiq knew that Altair had no intention of seeing the man safely returned to Masyaf. Surely, he could see that but he did not put voice to it as he sighed and hung his head. No, he said only, “I have called him Kadar. I will send a pigeon to Al Mualim so that he will know to expect him.”

“You will look for the eagle or its killer,” Altair said. The threat in his voice carried far greater weight than the attempt at a threat offered by the weak-willed Rafiq. 

\--

Acre was not the largest city that Altair traveled to but it seemed to stretch to immense proportions when Malik was limited by frail human limbs. Standing on the roof of the Assassin’s bureau, he could barely see far enough to discern the outer edge of the city. Before, he had been possessed of a sense of direction that did not falter (and had often saved Altair from his unfortunate habit of running face-first into trouble) but he floundered now. Home was not a definitive pull from somewhere deep in his chest but some abstract notion knocking about in his head. 

Altair at his side was not the comfort it had been. The man stood with his back straight and his body held in rigid control as he looked down at the city full of other-humans. Something dark had settled in Altair and it changed every aspect of him until there was almost nothing recognizable. It was just under his skin, making his face and his broad shoulders into something unknown. It coiled in his fists as he motioned Malik after him—across the rooftops, down into the streets, pushing through the crowd of people out-and-away toward the exit. 

They were out of the city before evening, picking their way out of view of the men that stood guarding the entrance. Malik followed this unknown-thing that almost looked-like Altair until there was nobody left but the birds and the bugs to see them. 

\--

They were six-steps out of the range of anyone that might have mistakenly tried to save the mute before Altair turned around and grabbed him. He had expected a fight but not the lax surprise that he got. The mute was taken almost-completely-but-surprise. Altair shoved him back until the man—what had the Rafiq chosen to call him, Kadar?—tripped on loose earth and fell back. Altair let him fall, stood over him as he looked up at him from his sprawled-out spread-eagle on the ground. “You are alive only because I allow it,” Altair said. “The moment I regret my decision will be the last moment of your life.”

The mute sat up, legs crossed in front of his body and hands resting against his lap. There was no submission in the motion, no give in his face when he looked back up at Altair. Even now, the same as it had been in the cramped alley between the counter and the wall at the bureau the mute looked at him with contempt.

“If you were truly a member of our ranks you would show me the respect I deserve. Al Mualim will see you for the fraud that you are—if you are still alive to see him.” All the threats in the world could not have broken through the mute’s cold stare so Altair sneered at him and turned back to keep walking.

\--

For a moment, and then two and then three, and on-and-on, Malik sat in the dirt and did not move. He counted the footsteps that Altair took until the man was too far from sight and then sat (alone) and waited for the sun to sink beyond the edge of the earth. A fresh pain pricked at his eyes and something wet-and-loose caught like a great round thing in the back of his throat. 

Malik had seen humans cry before. He had seen Altair cry when he was still little and clumsy. He had seen women cry in the village around Masyaf when the sons-and-husbands they sent away to war did not return. He had seen the small misbehaving children bawling in fear of punishment but it had always seemed so very foreign and worthless to him before. 

Pain did not feel the same in his eagle body. There had been injuries—broken feathers, bruised wings and once or more scratches from a hard won kill. These things had burnt and stung and _ached_ but never as they did in this useless human body. 

That is how the Djinn found him. How it came slithering like a bit of smoke across the ground until the gathering plume filled out the shape of a person sitting before him. It was a mocking-thing, wearing the white robes of an assassin over leathery gray-black skin. Here-and-there were brilliant-red-veins of fire. “Poor little bird,” the Djinn said. “I told you the human was unworthy. He is a vile, conceited creature that cares for little but himself. His pride is as a wide and deep as a great ocean and there is nothing he will not do to protect its frail construct.”

Anger had served Malik with far more loyalty than doubt or pain. It came to him like a strike of lightening. “You will not sway me. I will not fail.” The sound of the words was sudden and strange to him. He had never had a voice before, never one that could make such sounds filled with violent promise.

The Djinn smirked at his surprise and trembled in place. “Brave words, little bird. But you are here and he is far away by now. I will not be such a terrible master to you, magnificent little bird. Call for me when you tire of his many abuses and I will fetch you.”

“I will never call you,” Malik snapped at him. He was on his feet then and the Djinn was gone save for the little wisps of smoke caught in a stray wind.

\--

Altair found a tower worth climbing and pulled himself to the top. The one or two guards on the ground that were assigned to protect it didn’t seem to care about his presence enough to bother with him. The man at the top was far less lenient about his presence and Altair was quick to dispatch him before he could start crying out. 

The sky was growing murky with the death of the day. It was the time of day when Malik found him, the time of day they sat and watched the sun dip beyond vision and the people settle themselves in their own little corners to rest. Altair might have regaled the bird with the story of his adventures and the eagle might have offered him some gamey bit of meat. 

But there was no bird to greet him at the top of the tower. There was only the pain in his arm and the crumpled corpse in the corner still gurgling blood through the gaping hole in its throat. Altair crouched on the wooden plank and scanned the sky. (He told himself that he was being stupid, that the bird was only ever a bird and certainly never a friend.)

Just when the sun was slipping beyond view, just as darkness blanketed the ground and the guards were calling up after the dead man, Altair saw the mute walking along the road toward him. There was nothing cowed in the motion of his body but a predatory anger that made his motions seem almost graceful.

\--

Malik had not expected to find Altair quickly. He had thought the man might have stolen the first horse that he came across (an unfortunate habit the man had) and raced ahead. He certainly did not expect the find the man jumping out of a stray haystack with bits of hay falling away from his clothing and his hand like a vice grip dragging Malik forward-and-away from the guards that took a sudden interest in their presence. 

He did not expect a chase. 

Altair turned to face them with his sword drawn and Malik reached across his body to pull the shorter sword from its sheath on his back. The frown on Altair’s face did nothing to hide the sudden interest he showed at Malik’s bravado. He could hold the weapon (it could not be so difficult) but he did not know how to use it.

The fight was brief, a matter of clanging metal and deadly-wet slips as Altair buried his swoard into their bodies. One man died with two hands clutching at the split in his gut and Altair offered him no kindness but pushed the man back away from him. 

“My weapons are not yours,” Altair said. He took the short sword back and cleaned his sword with a scrap of clothing from the guards before he sheathed it. “I will kill you,” he said. It was clear from the way he said the words that he did not understand why Malik had returned to him. 

Malik nodded. Then he motioned out into the deepening darkness. They were still far from where Altair liked to camp for the night and the moon was far too slim in the sky to offer them much light to see by if they did not reach the location before the last lingering gray light was gone. 

\--


	4. Chapter 4

_**day three:** _

The morning came on slow, creeping feet. It crested over the slowing tower of earth that hide the curved little corner where Altair often took refuge after a successful mission in Acre. He was there now, coiled into a ball far smaller than the length of his body would suggest was possible. Malik had been shoved out of the warmth and cover of the hiding spot and left to sleep in the open dirt along the side of a well-known path. Creatures-and-humans alike had easy access to his vulnerable body. 

Sleep had not come easily nor frequently. When it had come, it was in brief catches interrupted by abrupt nightmares. Malik was awake long before the sun, armed with nothing but the dim light of the murky-pre-dawn and a sharp bit of rock he’d found. He picked his way along until he came upon a hunting ground rife with burrowing creatures that could still be caught. Human eyes were not as reliable as eagle eyes but he could see well enough. 

Malik had watched Altair hunt for small game, watched him crouch near the ground in his youth as he stared with pink-tongue-over-pale lips waiting for something edible to emerge from the ground. Altair-the-younger had no patience to wait, not ability to still his body to provide the creatures that hid in the ground some sense of safety. Malik had watched Altair-the-younger starve but he had not seen him _learn_ from those follies. Altair had simply given up and moved onto fights that he could win, animals that could be trapped and killed and eaten with greater ease. He had learned to pack food that he could easily carry for days to make up the difference. 

Malik caught-and-killed the dirt-covered rodents with their strong-scented fur and carried them with bloody-throats back along the path his thick, shuffling feet had left in the dirt. He had intended to throw the food at Altair—as he always had done—thought with great satisfaction about how Altair hated to be startled. Malik even walked over to where the man slept. His body was slowly unfurling in the rising light. His cowl had fallen away from his face, slipped back away from his light-brown hair (lighter than the hair on Malik’s head). His face was still slack with sleep, his eyes closed oh-so-peacefully. He looked happier in his sleep than his face could be forced to look in wakefulness. 

He was attractive and the stark contrast of the weight of that perception in this human body versus the uselessness of it in his eagle body ran through Malik’s body with an unrecognizable shiver. It had not mattered to him before what Altair looked like save when the other humans had finally taken note of his human based on nothing but his apparently pleasing looks. But the lines of Altair’s face were intensely pleasing to Malik now, the fullness of his lips set something like a slow-burning ember deep in his gut. The width of Altair’s shoulders, the length of his arms, the gruff bluntness of his strong hands all _meant something_ different.

Malik found himself growing shorter, couldn’t fight the impulse to move his body closer to Altair’s even as he resolutely kept a safe distance. His knees bent and his back bent forward until he was crouching, watching the rise-and-fall of Altair’s breath. He had crystal-clear memories of the man’s chest stripped bare. He knew where the scars were on Altair’s skin. 

Oh-and there was such power contained in his human; Malik had long exalted in his human’s excellence but it had never felt like this. It had never drained through all of his body, never pooled so suddenly or so completely into a single part of his body. It had never brought a wet sweat to his skin, never filled his lungs and robbed them of breath all at once. He could not help from letting out the softest little sounds of confusion-and-want even as his hand slid between his own thighs to press against the tight-insistent-heat trapped there. 

Altair opened his eyes with a half-aware frown on his face and Malik threw the carcasses he found at the man in his momentary panic.

\--

Exhaustion won in the end. Altair had learned the dangers of going too-long with too-little sleep. Even when he had tried to ignore it, to push through it and move beyond it, his body gave into the inevitable need for sleep regardless.

Altair did not expect to sleep well. He barely expected to sleep at all since he had not eaten, the idiot mute was lurking in the mid distance and he had not had the chance to scout the area effectively. But sleep came for him, dragged him down and held him under. Altair slept-and-slept-and-slept until he woke up to two dusty-furred creatures hitting him in the face. The smell of their fresh death like a line of blood across his cheek and a rotten taste in his mouth when he did not close it fast enough.

The mute was scuttling away from him faster than he could react and it was for the best. Altair snarled something wordless at him (lost between a half-thought moment of joy that Malik had found him and the sharp disappointment to find some pitiful human in place of his magnificent friend). Altair rolled up to his feet with one carcass in each hand and threw one back at the mute, hit him in the back and watched as the man resolutely sat with his legs pulled up toward his chest and his body hunched forward. 

For a moment (not even a brief second in time) Altair considered throwing the other at him. He considered dragging the mute up and hitting him until he stopped _existing_. But the fading-warmth clenched in his fist brought a rational respite from the anger. The mute had found _food_. Altair looked down at the dead thing’s gaping little jaw. He couldn’t shake the muscle-memory of so many meals delivered to him by Malik. The bird had thrown the things at him from the sky, circled around him as he jumped in shock and landed in the distance to ruffle his feathers in critical amusement.

“At least you’re not entirely useless,” Altair snapped at the mute’s back. He was not sure what he expected (a fight, at least) but the man did not even raise his head. It stayed down and his back stayed hunched. 

\--

The man in living-motion was no less physically attractive but he was far less desirable. After a time, Malik convinced his body to cease it’s ridiculous assault on his better sense and the heated _need_ had slowly (oh-so-slowly) gave out to a calmer feeling. By the time Malik got to his feet again, Altair had cooked the meat and eaten the greater portion of it, saving only the most inconsiderate portion for Malik. He was not gracious enough to offer it to him either but left it sitting charred in the dying fire. 

Malik ate to fend off the empty feeling in his hungry gut. 

Altair did not offer an explanation for his actions, did not as much as look at Malik before he started walking away. No, he simply walked away and trusted Malik would follow or perhaps hoped that he would not. 

\--

The mute followed him along the empty path like a beaten dog—mangy and beaten and still loyal. Altair took them along the path with the greatest obstacles, away from smooth land, little villages with food, water and the promise of somewhere soft to rest for a moment. He drove them purposefully away from areas with horses that could have been bought, stolen or borrowed and out into the wilderness where the ground was uncertain and the distance to their destination was doubled. He walked-and-walked until even his own body grew weary in need of rest. 

The mute followed his every step.

\--

At first, Malik was sure that Altair was leading him away to be rid of him. It would not take much to slip off the very face of the planet along the path that Altair led them. It would not take much to lose sight of one another and wander lost through the unfamiliar landscape.

From a purely logical point of view, the plan had merit. The mute simpleton that Altair thought-he-was surely could have gotten lost, most likely would have slipped in his step and might even have fainted from lack of sleep, water and food. Surely, a lesser man would have given in and succumbed to the inevitable. Altair’s choice in assassin technique was not swift nor merciful (in his usual style) but furious and cruel. Altair led him along in the hope of torturing him with the uneven landscape and the unforgiving glare of the sun beating down on his back.

All save for how Malik had flown this route so-many times before. He had seen the world stretched beneath him. He knew where the water-was and where the food-was and where shelter could be found. His human body was shivering in weakness as he kept pace at a safe distance from Altair but there was no mortal terror in his bones.

Anger drove him onward long after his muscles filled with heat.

\--

It was a rock, not a clump of earth that hit him in the back. It certainly was no the first time he had been hit with a rock. Cruel childish pranks and indignant earth-bound guards had delighted in equal measures with pelting him with whatever they could hold. The brief spike of pain was nothing at all compared to the flash of white-hot-anger. 

The mute, in all defiance, stood there with rocks in his hands and no fear in his face. The mute who was alive only because Altair had spared him. The mute who looked him straight in the eye and threw another rock right-at-his-face. It did not reach its target but the smile that crossed the idiot’s face was no less pleased when Altair ducked away from it. He dropped the rocks he was holding and stood his ground as if he were _beckoning_ his own death.

Altair had killed unarmed men. Altair had killed incompetent men. Altair had killed weak men. Altair had killed inconvenient men.

They all fell before him, heavy with bloody death. But he had never (not once, not ever) killed someone solely because he hated them. It boiled through his veins like the taste of bile on his tongue and there was no power in the whole of the world that could have stopped him—not the Creed, not Al Mualim, not even Malik who had so long pulled him from worse fates—once he started running.

\--

Malik was a disadvantage. Not because he was a lesser predator. He was not possessed of lesser strength, lesser endurance or lesser intelligence. It was simply that Altair had decided he was worthless and could not be bothered to as much as look at him. Hours-and-hours of the final days of his life had leeched away already and what remained seemed to be made of the same pale nothingness of the past several hours.

These thoughts came to him in angry bursts as he crawled after the man. Malik loved a man who was his equal—not superior—loved a man who _deserved_ the faith and love that was given to him. He did not love a spoiled, selfish egotistical _child_. 

The path Altair took them on cut across the top of a steep slide into a stream that swelled and ebbed with the seasons. It was not so impressive now but the width and depth of it did not matter so much as Altair’s fearful avoidance of water. 

\--

The mute moved, slid to the side and disappeared from Altair’s view just as the earth itself seemed to give out under his feet. He landed on his side (hard) as the ground went suddenly inverted and gravity was dragging him down a rough slope toward a hard stop at the bottom. He rolled forward, hit his shoulder against something _hard_ and was back on his feet over spongy green grasses. Altair turned his head to find his prey and Malik was there with a wild-scream as he ran full-force into Altair’s body without even the slightest attempt to avoid him. 

The impact knocked them both off balance again, the world slipped out from under Altair and the not-so-distant sound of water sloshing tightened in his chest like a frigid-slippery-grip of ( _terror_ ). The sky over his head seemed to spin just seconds before his body broke through the surface of the murky-little-stream and the weight of the mute over him forced him down-down beneath the water. It came after him like a hundred greedy arms, pulling and pushing at his body. It cut across his face, filled his mouth and wriggled into his nose. It clenched between his fingers, slithered in through the gaps in his clothes. 

Everything was cold-and-black under the water. Shock burned in his lungs for the breath he had not been given a chance to take and something numb and stupid overtook the whole of his body. He was _thrashing_ with all the same uselessness as a child dropped in his first puddle. Altair _knew_ this and still he could not stop the quake in his chest or the frantic motion of his arms-and-legs.

It was a solid hand at the back of his robes and an arm under his that dragged him upward toward the surface of the water. Altair clutched at the savior-thing and opened his mouth in a ragged-wet-gasp of gratitude. For a moment he was nothing but a slippery-wet-stupid thing too happy to be alive to worry itself with the nature of its survival.

\--

Malik had wanted joy. There was no happiness in seeing-and-feeling Altair’s panic when the water closed over his face. The blackness that filled his chest dissipated in a sudden violent regret. Malik was a _predator_ , surely, but not a _monster_. 

Altair clung to him—soaked and shivering—with greater honesty in his blind fear than he had shown in any of the days Malik had seen him through human eyes. But in the next moment, his feet found purchase in the wet mud at the bottom of the stream and the wide-set of his eyes narrowed into something murderous. He fled, all the same, to the safety of solid ground. Once there, his face turned red-covered-in-white splotches and his hands shook even as he tried to force them into still fists. 

Malik slogged through the shallow water to get back on the shore. He went around to stand in front of Altair and motioned his hand out toward the steep incline and the pointless length of their path. He motioned at the food that was not shared and the kindness that was not offered. His throat made useless noises not so unlike soft mewl of his eagle-throat. 

\--

The stupid mute was grunting at him, making soft-little-protests and waving his hand in the air. Altair had every-reason in the whole-world to kill the man where he stood (so fucking indignant in his uselessness) but he could not stop the shake in his chest from spreading to his arms. His heart was beating-beating-beating too-too-fast and there was no part of his body that felt wholly _his_ to command. The stillness of his body was not bought with sudden inspired patience but humiliation.

He was looking at the face of an idiot, dripping with water, wondering what stupid things the mute must have been trying to say with the wild wave of his arm. He stared at the rich-darkness of his skin, the livid brightness of his eyes and the thick blackness of his hair. Altair had not bothered to look at the mute closely, probably would not have been able to find him again if he’d lost sight of him long enough for the idiot to change his clothes. There had been no reason to look at the idiot so closely. He was only ever meant to be temporary. 

Yet, here they were. Here they stood on the muddy shore of a shallow stream with the mute’s face twisted in aggravation and the assurance clinging to his shoulders that he had every-right-in-the-world to do what he’d done. It had been a trap from the moment the first rock hit Altair all the way to the moment the man pulled him free from the water again.

“How did you know?” Altair snapped at him.

Oh-and-the sudden focus of the mute’s eyes. The superior tilt of his face, the fluid ease with which he faced Altair and said-without-saying that he had _known_ and that Altair had _deserved_ it.

\--

“How did you know?” Altair asked him.

Malik could have told him about the beginning, before Malik had a name, before he cared about this human above all others. He might have told him about the skinny thing that Altair had been, stripped bare to the waist perched at the bank of some water, cupping it over his head to fight off the heat of the day. He might have told Altair of the pull of gravity and the noisy splash as the boy fell forward and the frightened struggle to escape from the shallows. He would have told him all about how long a stupid bird sat and watched a stupid human rocking back and forth on the shore as water dried across its skin.

But he said nothing because he could say nothing. He looked at Altair with the same silence he had always been bound to and trusted his body and his face and the unspoken things to convey the notion to the man.

I know because I’ve seen your weakness. You are not so great as you think, human.

\--

Altair stripped out of his clothes and laid them out under the sun. The idiot mute pulled his own shirt off after a long struggle and laid it out not so far away from Altair’s. Altair laid his weapons out to dry and sat naked on the uncomfortable ground with his knees bent and his heels digging into the soft sponge of the moist dirt.

\--

Hunger drove Malik to search for prey. He plucked a dagger out of the long spread of weapons Altair carried with him. The man looked at him when he did it, narrow eyes and all bare skin, but he did not say anything. Malik walked a distance, looked up the incline they had tumbled down and then across the shallow stream to the flatter ground beyond. Altair watched him when he crossed the stream, watched him as he shuffled through the rough growth until he came upon the first of many holes where dirt-dwelling creatures lived. He tracked them, followed the tunnels and holes until he found a position that afforded him the best chance at finding something to eat. 

\--

The mute returned with meat for the second time in a single day. There was a wide swipe of blood across his thigh where he’d wiped the dagger after he killed his prey and a line of scratches on his right forearm that must have been the last desperate fight of the carcass hanging from the man’s arms. For a moment, the mute stood at the shore looking at him—staring at all of his exposed skin with a singular focus that was not dampened by the heat of the day, the exhaustion that bruised the skin beneath his eyes or the hunger that had driven him to search for the food to start with.

For a moment, the man looked genuinely confused and then his skin started to flush pink and he looked down-away before throwing the food at Altair and making a puppyish demand about preparing the meat.

\--

Altair built a fire but he did not bother to put clothes on. He skinned and dressed the meat Malik had given him but did not bother to put on clothes. He sat and ate the undercooked meat with pink juice dripping down his chin and slipping down the length of his sweat-shined neck but he did not bother to put on clothes.

\--

It was easy-enough to feel like the last man in the world out on the road between one place and the next. Altair had made a life out of travelling alone, had grown used to the dreary silence that came without companions. He’d grown strong and confident _alone_. 

He had not been lonely, not for as long as he could remember, not for any length of time. Not since Malik had come to him with food and stood to watch him eat it. There had always-always been the knowledge that the bird was there and it had always been enough.

But there was no bird in the sky over his head. Malik was dead or gone and would not return to him now. An idiot mute sat to the side of him with pink blushing shame on his face that would have been enough excuse to kill him. Being thrown into the water was enough of an excuse to kill him. The man’s existence and the certainty that he was nobody—certainly not an assassin—was enough of an excuse. 

Altair did not kill him.

\--

The day dragged and they did not move from the poor camp they had made. 

\--

Altair stood and the mute stared at him. The sun had baked his body and left his skin feeling crisp-and-hot. His clothes were dry enough now to be serviceable but Altair took a step toward the idiot instead of moving to put them on. Al Mualim could not have expected him to return with any greater speed than he usually arrived with. The old man had even suggested Altair take a day or two of leisure before returning as a reward for excellence. 

“They have names for men like you,” Altair said. He went slowly down, crouched in the space right in front of the mute’s guilty stare, looked down at the noticeable tightness of his pants and then back at his face. “I have seen the things they do to men like you.” 

The mute cocked his head one way as wrinkles creased his forehead in confusion. After a moment some quiet certainty smoothed away the confusion and he put his hand on Altair’s chest without even the most passing attempt at denial. His hands were smooth-and-soft the gentle hands of a man who had never worked for a living. But his touch was clumsy and unpracticed. 

Altair caught his wrist, wrenched it back and shoved the man down so he was flat against the ground. A bleat of shock came like a bubble from the man’s mouth before he tried to shove Altair away from him. There was blood under Altair’s palm where he ripped the scabs away from the man’s shallow wounds. There was blood just under this man’s skin blushing his skin up rosy in confusion-and-fear-and-arousal. 

Oh-and his mouth was wet-and-sloppy when Altair kissed him. The kiss silenced the protest of the man’s body and for a moment he was perfectly still as a bit of ground that Altair was uncomfortably molesting. Then he pulled his wrist free and kicked at Altair’s leg so that he could spread his own. The mute put his arms over his head and pulled his knees up and out to give Altair the space and control to do what he wanted. 

There was something-something disastrously familiar about the pose (something entirely too pleasing) that knocked around in his head for a few brief seconds before he closed his hand around the mute’s forearm and kissed him again with twice the force and only a fraction of the attempt at consideration. He kissed the man and bit at his neck and shoulders because _he could_. 

\--

Malik did not understand the sweaty-strangeness of the human’s mating when he watched before. He did not understand the pawing and the grunting and the piercing little moans. These things had been a strange and grotesque mystery to him. He had understood only that his human had chosen another mate (and another, and another) but each mate he’d taken him had taken Altair farther away from Malik. 

He knew, from observation, that Altair expected-and-preferred-and-would-get what he wanted and no less. He’d watched the man spread the other humans out beneath him in the very same way Malik spread himself. He had sat in confusion at the frantic humping.

Altair fit against his body imperfectly. The difference in their heights was inconsequential now but their bodies were the same-not-different. Altair was hard against him, rubbing the length of his dick against Malik’s skin with impatient hisses of breath and flashes of white teeth because it was not-the-same as what he’d done to those other female humans he’d taken to his bed. Malik dropped one hand down to free his dick and wrapped both of his legs around Altair’s body just so he could rub back up against the man. 

They knocked their mouths together and Altair shoved his tongue into Malik’s mouth in a way that was simultaneously disgusting and _intriguing_. His body understood these things in a way entirely different than his mind and the dichotomy left his head spinning.

Then Altair grabbed him by the upper arm and rolled him onto his stomach with a groan-like growl of frustration. His body draped across Malik’s back, his arm clutched at Malik’s chest and in this new-position with Malik’s pants shoved down to his thighs, Altair’s dick fit against his ass with a dry slide again-and-again. The difference must have pleased him because Altair’s noises were angry-but-greedy.

Malik grunted with every knock of Altair’s body against his, braced his elbow to the ground, rubbed his sweating forehead against the bone of his forearm and fumbled with his hand around the pulsating hardness of his dick. The feeling was unlike-anything and it _overwhelmed_ him.

\--

After, the mute’s body was covered in the marks Altair’s teeth-and-hands had left. He was sticky with the evidence of a brief and unsatisfying tryst. And he was shaking: knees folded beneath him, face hidden in his arms, back sloped in submission. 

Altair rinsed his body in the shallow stream water and pulled his clothes back on. He fit his weapons back into their sheaths and picked up what remained of his travelling provisions. When he looked back at the mute, he was sitting up (at least) and looking at Altair. 

It was a look so reminiscent of Malik’s that for a moment (if only for a second of insanity) he was sure the bird had found a new home in a human’s body. Oh because the mute’s face was so full of disdain and disapproval for his every-single-movement but still caught in pride-and-(love) that went deeper and hurt more.

_You could have done better_ , the mute (Malik) seemed to always say. 

\--

Malik dressed himself and followed Altair when he took them back up the slope and out into the rough terrain of the path he had chosen. They found a sliver of cover in the open landscape as the sky started to darken. It was nowhere-Altair had ever camped before. The unknown seemed to irritate him because he moved here-and-there and there-and-here and picked at twigs and rocks and the dirt itself. He stood and paced and stood again.

“Stop,” Altair said to him

Malik was doing nothing.

“You are nothing!” Altair shouted at him, “you deserve nothing from me! I could have killed you for the way you looked at me and I did not! I could have killed you for attacking me and I did not.”

Guilt was a terrible look on his human’s face. Altair turned and left him. He did not run but stalk across the ground with impotent rage and Malik was wordless and wingless and could not have offered the comfort that Altair so-obviously needed in the odd shaped flesh he now wore. So he did not follow. 

He went to the sliver of cover and lay in it as the sun sank lower-and-lower. Exhaustion pulled heavy at his eyes and stilled his breath into a steady rise-and-fall. 

\--


	5. Chapter 5

_**day four:** _

It was not as if his had been a life lived without regrets. Altair did not waste his time on _regretting_ things that he could not undo and did not bother with undoing things he might have regretted (as a general rule). The truth was, he had learned _young_ that there was nobody in the world to rely on but himself and the lesson stuck with him long after the wounds of his childhood healed into faded scars on his adult body. Every moment and every hour and every day of every week of every month of every year had given him an even deeper certainty that there was nobody left to trust among the people that populated the miserable planet around him.

Altair walked and then he ran and when he’d exhausted himself and the light of the day, he found a quiet corner of the vast world to rest. He didn’t think of the idiot mute. He did not think of Malik-lost-and-gone. He did not think of anything with such avid concentration that it felt like a tight knot in the center of his skull.

\--

Malik did not wake up alone. The Djinn—the infuriating, mocking little bastard—stood not even a full four feet away wrapped up into the body of the sort of eagle Malik had been only five days ago. His feathers were a deep golden-brown and his eyes were sharp and keen. When the Djinn ruffled up his feathers smoke slipped out from between them and a deep red glow showed through. It grew suddenly bright and then faded out gray as the Djinn relaxed again and cocked his head to the side.

“He doesn’t want you, little bird,” the Djinn said. The words flowed out through his brilliant yellow beak the way they had slithered out of his odd human lips. The difference was only that no eagle should have spoken anything at all like those words.

Malik sat up, pulled his legs to cross them in front of his body and looked around the empty landscape around him. There was only so much protest he could put up when he had been abandoned with such authority. Whatever momentary progress he had made with making Altair look at him had obviously been wasted effort. “It has not been a week.”

The Djinn walked forward and the curve of his talons cut into the softer earth beneath him. His wings spread for a moment as his body seemed to rear back and there was a slow-burning-glow just beneath the golden brown that grew-and-grew until the whole smoldering mass of him had reshaped itself into something more human. His hand was hot-as-fire when it cupped around Malik’s face and his bright-bright green eyes had more compassion and pity than could be tolerated. “You have lost, little bird. You did not go quietly or easily but all-the-same, you have lost. He is gone and he does not intend to return to you.” 

“I have not lost,” Malik said, “he loves me. This I have seen in his face and in the way his body moves. I have tasted it on his skin and felt it. He _loves_ me.”

The Djinn rolled his eyes, pulled back his hand and sat back against the ground. With a wave of his hand he made a fire with a simmer dish of something delicious over it that he stirred with a stick he produced from nowhere. His face looked unimpressed as he tended his breakfast. “He loves a bird. You are here in front of him the same as you have always been, filled with unshakeable loyalty and he cannot see it.”

The words were as surely an attack as any Malik had ever seen. Emotion was a strange cloud in his head that was heavier and thicker than anything he’d felt as an eagle. Every slip of syllable was designed to invoke anger and pain. The humans had spoken again-and-again of the trickery of Djinns, how they manipulated and cheated to get what they wanted. Malik had listened to all these things and he had known all these things but he’d thrown himself at the mercy of a Djinn all the same.

“It has not been seven days,” Malik said again. “You cannot have me.”

“Yet,” the Djinn added. Then he spread his arms and disappeared in a plume of gray smoke.

\--

Altair woke, languished in some indefinable indecision, then picked himself up and set a course back to his usual path. He walked and walked long after hunger started picking at him. He walked and walked long after he couldn’t stop himself from glancing up to check for Malik flying overhead. 

He walked until he came upon a poor collection of homes spread in a tired little village. There was no market but he knocked on a door and traded a few coins for the leftovers of a warm meal. The woman that gave him the food would not permit him into her house and he would not have gone even if she had. He sat outside while he ate and watched the few men that lived here working the tired fields. In the distance he could see one-two-three horses left unattended and easily taken. 

The route back to Masyaf was an easy ride on horseback. Once he got there he could have easily forgotten the whole terrible mess of this journey and the day wasted trying to drive off the idiot mute that was ultimately disposed of by childish shouting. (Except, no matter where he went, no matter how far, Malik would not be there.)

\--

Malik’s wrath was infamous among frightened little novices and long-practiced journeymen. Masyaf was a playground of scars he’d left with his talons. Altair had told him the consequences of his anger but Malik had only-ever-tempered his rage to appease the man. 

But it was rage that moved him, rage that drove him down from the path Altair had led them along, back to smooth-ground and onward-onward toward Masyaf. Malik reached a village at the height of the day that was furious with fresh-pillaged hurt. A man was crying injustice to a man with armor about how his horse-had-been-stolen and only two remained. One white, one bay and the missing had been a magnificent black horse. 

\--

Altair did not slowed the horse out of a frothy gallop as soon as they cleared the distance between the scene of his theft and the long stretch of nothing between that village and next sign of civilization that might care about a stolen horse. Masyaf was known to take horses—many of the people who lived in these villages knew-and-expected their horses taken and recompense delivered at a later date. Except Altair had taken many horses and never bothered to repay the debt. Now and again he left one horse borrowed in a strange village as a trade from a fresher beast but Al Mualim would have frowned at him over the rudeness of it. 

He might have lectured Altair on the perils of inviting the people’s anger and dislike. It was hard to be anonymous when you were singularly hated.

\--

The bay horse regarded him with a curious toss of its head. Malik had perched himself on these fences in the past, watched in idle amusement as Altair crept his way across the open space and pulled himself up onto the horse’s back. He had watched the beast turn its head toward his human with some confusion combination of instant obedience and haughty disloyalty. Horses were not wild creatures—not these ones—but animals the humans had broken and bred to serve their own purposes.

Still, there was enough wild left in this horse that it saw Malik for what he was. When he reached his hand out, the horse stretched its neck and pushed its nose against his palm. Malik wanted to say _I must find the one that took your brother, horse_ but he said nothing as his hand slid down the bay’s powerful neck. He caught his hand in its mane—fist tight and painful in its grip—and the horse stood as he fumbled with pulling himself onto its back.

\--

Altair was looking at the ground—not the sky—when a passing shadow caught his attention. It soared past him first, circled around and came again: lower and larger. When he looked up, the horse under him startled at the sudden jolt and Altair’s lax grip on the beast’s reins reflexively tightened. 

“Malik,” Altair said. 

The bird did another circle before coming lower-and-closer. It swooped past him, flapped its wings and surged forward along the path. It had not been the first, would not be the last time that Malik had ever announced his presence with such antics, or that he’d demanded to be followed with utmost obedience. 

\--

For a matter of exhilarating moments, the sound of angry shouts and the clank-and-crash of weapons at Malik’s back were so loud they verged on deafening. But he slid his body low against the horse’s back and it responded in kind by rearing up on its hind legs and _running_ with all the full magnificence of its lost freedom. They dashed onward, far and away.

\--

Altair pulled the horse to a stop at the base of one an unattended guard tower when Malik drifted to a lazy stop over top of it. He was perched on the wooden planks near the top, head cocked and curiously looking down at him from the advantageous height. Altair got a running start that gave him a decent start on climbing the crumbling side of the tower. His fingers fit easily into the shallow grooves and his body felt strong-and-capable as he moved up-and-up. 

There was a single man at the top with one hand outreached to shoo Malik away from the outcropping of wood. He held a short dagger in his hand and spit a vile combination of insults from his worthless mouth. It was an easy-enough job of catching him by the mouth and activating the hidden blade to pierce through the giving flesh of his back. The man landed as a corpse on the roof of the tower and Altair stepped over him even as the guard tried to grab at his ankles to stop him. 

Altair put one knee up onto the side of the tower, put one hand down against the wood and leaned out to run his fingers down Malik’s breast even as the bird cocked its head at him and squeaked his ridiculous noise of disapproval-and-pride. “Where have you been?” Altair whispered to the bird.

\--

The noise came again, louder-and-softer like a great wave against the shore. The sound of hooves and the clank of weapons layered over the approaching shouts of just-men seeking the horse thieves. Malik had watched their pursuits before, seen how relentlessly they pursued Altair until he vanished (all at once) from their paths. Even long after he’d gone, they persisted in searching.

Malik tightened his grip on the horses main and tightened his legs around its wide ribs. He had no words in his throat but a dreadful whine of worry that seemed to spur the beast on just as well. It was certain-death if he were caught before he found his human.

\--

Altair had been bitten by Malik hundreds (maybe thousands) of times. His knuckles had been reshaped by the nasty little nip of the bird’s meat-tearing sharp beak. The taste of his blood must have been a rare delicacy to the remorseless little bastard because he so delighted in drawing it. His body had muscle memory of the motion, the sharp sting of torn flesh and the strange fondness that specific pain brought him. 

Altair had run his fingers over Malik’s feathers so often he could have picked his bird out of a thousand birds of the same color-and-shape just by feel alone.

Oh and he’d slept with the bird as a sentry over his head so often even the smell of the eagle was burnt into his memory with crystal clarity. 

This thing that pressed back against his hand was not his bird. It’s bright-bright eyes turned green with the dreadful realization that must have shown on Altair’s face. Its body turned toward him and with one half-lifted wing it pushed Altair’s hand deeper into its feathers down to the super-heated flesh beneath them. A thick plume of smoke came from where the feathers parted. 

Altair seized the thing by the throat, lifted it as it flapped its wide wings. The eagle’s body was powerful enough but the thing that was _posing_ as an eagle was infinitely stronger as it dragged him toward the edge of the wooden plank so that Altair had to release him or fall. Self-preservation loosened his hold and had his body shuffling back to solid ground but Altair pulled his throwing knives and took aim at the creature that seemed to swell in size.

The first knife missed, the second nipped at the edge of one now-massive wing but the third struck home in the thing’s neck deep enough a flash of red-like-fire burst into the air on the impact. The thing (barely even recognizable as an eagle now) spun in the air with its colossal wings pulling in to wrap around the too-stretched length of its body. It crashed against the roof of the tower in a great explosion of singed golden feathers that filled the air.

Altair dove into the worst of the mess, pushed his arms out and through the falling feathers and caught at the thing in the center of it. A hand grabbed his wrist and the feathers that were drifting oh-so-slowly dropped so suddenly the world itself seemed to stop for an instance. “Djinn,” Altair said.

The creature was stretched into the shape of a man, slithering skin over _fire_ and blood as hot as molten metal as it slid down the thing’s bare chest. The hand that tightened across Altair’s wrist was hot enough to burn an imprint into his flesh but the pain was hardly-enough-of-a-distraction. “It was a perfect copy, Altair,” the Djinn said. His voice was hard-water over jagged-rocks and his smile was just a spare slit in his face. 

“Where is Malik!” Altair shouted at the Djinn.

Oh but it only shook its head at him—slow-and-sad-and so very pitying.

\--

Malik raced on but the men at his back did not fall away. At the crest of a short hill he saw the distant blur of the next village, the blocky rise of a guard’s tower and the almost recognizable sight of Altair’s so-favored black horse. He made the brief mistake of looking over his shoulder and saw the crowd of four-five-six men at his back with weapons at the ready and vicious intent making their voices wet-and-urgent.

\--

“The truth is, _human_ , that we are both guilty of the same crime.” The Djinn slipped away from him, went unsolid right in front of his face, sliding out from the damning close space between them and reforming at his side. The thing dressed itself in the flesh of the man Altair had killed only moments before as it leaned against the low rise of the tower. “Djinn are bound by the same rules as you dirty clay men—it’s unfair if you ask me. A superior should benefit from its superiority. I know you agree, of course.” It waved its hand to the side to dismiss the notion even as it spoke.

“Where is _Malik_?” Altair said again. His voice did not rise but he drew his sword as he took a step toward the filthy-lying-Djinn lounging so easily in front of him. 

“I never wanted him, of course. A clever bird, that one but a bird nonetheless.” The Djinn was looking at his sword now, the smile that had played at his face faltering ever so slightly before it stood. Altair moved to attack him and the monster merely lifted his hand and caught the blade in the air. His hand closed around it, glowed intensely red-hot before the blade bent and snapped. The Djinn grabbed him by the front of his robes and dragged him forward, lifted his body from the ground and pressed the tip of his own broken sword against his chin. “You are a vile, vain, arrogant human. That the fate of your world rests so resolutely on your _unworthy_ shoulders sickens me. Better that I take your life with the same carelessness you have taken so many others than to leave the fate of so many in your incompetent hands.”

“Then do so or stop speaking in riddles, _Djinn_. What have you done with Malik?”

“What he asked,” the Djinn said. Over his shoulder, the sound of a horse’s frantic gallop echoed from the ground and immediately after the resounding clatter of half a dozen more. The Djinn turned away from him, eyes half-closed and a brief look of pain before it dissipated all-at-once in a great fluttering of smoke.

\--

Malik fell from the horse, rolled up onto his hands-and-knees to escape the stampede of its many hooves. His two hands caught the edge of a cart full of hay and he threw himself into it in the last few seconds before the men who had chased him so long came with their furious-loud-voices.

The sky-and-the-tower were visible in the chaotic spaces between the piles of hay over his face. There was a white hot pain in the back of his shoulder were something had struck him and it was only the awkward twist of his body that had kept him from driving the unknown thing deeper into his flesh. His blood must be running like a wet puddle from the wound but he could not bring himself to reach back to touch it. There was white-hot-panic of survival gripping his chest and it was hard enough to keep his body from moving in a fruitless attempt to flee.

All around his head, the men on horses were shouting at one another demanding to know where he must have gone.

\--

Altair saw the idiot-mute in his borrowed-whites with a long-red trail down his back just seconds-before he collapsed into the pile of hay. The fleshy-red wound in his back left a streak of red across the damp golden-yellow of the hay that would be easily spotted by the men who had chased him. For a single moment, nothing in the whole of the world made _any fucking_ sense. 

The Djinn was gone-just-gone and there was no way to know which direction he had even gone. The sword he’d broken with the heat of his hand was lying at a slant against the dead body of the man Altair had killed. 

Beneath him were the men from not-so-distant village in an uproar over two stolen horses and hiding in rustling hay was the stupid-stupid-mute that had been nothing but trouble since the moment he had fallen in through the roof naked-and-fearless. The idiot that had never once looked at Altair without some familiar recognition in his face even as he fumbled his way through every-other-human thing.

No-but-it _couldn’t be_.

\--

Malik was dragged out of the hay by two men with grim faces and perfectly-justified rage. Even he could not begrudge them their fury. He had taken was did not rightful belong to him—a crime surely even in the animal world—and he had been caught. Swift and inevitable death was the only serviceable punishment. This he knew, and yet he fought against them with the same ultimately uselessness as the many creatures that had died in his talons with their blood dripping from his beak.

His human teeth when he caught them on these strange men’s hands were not made for tearing flesh. His hand fingernails when they dug into clothing-and-skin were not meant to rip and ruin. He was defenseless and weaponless and consequently _helpless_.

The last clear sound he could make out of the panic of his ears was the thump of something landing in the hay behind him and the outraged curiosity of the man wrenching his arm up-and-out.

\--

There were four men in a cluster around the mute and another two collecting the stolen horses. Altair rolled out of the hay, used the hidden blade to kill the first man, a dagger to cut the second from throat to mid-chest and had to dodge out of the way of attack. He drove his dagger into the back of the third man’s skull when he tripped on the rough ground at the base of the tower then turned to look at the last man. 

He held the mute’s left arm out at an angle that had the mute on his toes and a white-spotted pain on his face. It would have been easy enough to rush the man and overpower him but the cost was unknown. He could have easily dislocated the mute’s shoulder, broken his arm or worse before Altair got to him. 

His throwing knives were already wasted and that left him with limited options about how best to attack. The split-seconds of indecision gave the man holding the mute time enough to relax out of the stance of high-pressure. It was a fatal mistake because the danger to the mute had lessened in the single gesture and there was nothing-at-all to prevent Altair from rushing him. 

\--

Malik hit the ground on his side with the sound of Altair cracking the man’s neck like a resonating crack in his skull. There were other men that shouted in outrage and fear but they did not immediately rush toward them. The brief moment of respite from attack gave Altair just enough time to put one flat hand across Malik’s arm and reach to pull the weapon from the wound in his back. It flashed silver-and-bloody in the air over his face as Altair got to his feet and moved past him. 

\--

The smarter man rode out on the horse he’d rode in on but the less intelligent one died with a throwing knife in his throat and both hands clasping at the bubbling-red-wound. Altair turned back around to see the mute getting to his feet. His right arm was across his chest with his hand under his left arm grasping at the raw wound in his back. There was dirt all across his clothes and his face with an ugly bruise across his cheekbone that might have come from being manhandled or from the speed with which he threw himself into the hay. 

Altair stared at him, eyes narrowed, thought about how the man had shown up the-very-same-night Malik had-gone-missing. Then there were a dozen or two abuses that Altair had thrown at the man and his unflagging loyalty. There was the smelly little dirt-dwelling animals this mute had brought him. 

Oh-and-this man standing not so far from him knew everything about him, how terrified he was of water, where he camped and what path he would take, what he expected of the women he’d bedded and how to goad him without a single word. 

It felt like something wet-and-hot caught just behind his face when Altair said, “Malik.”

\--

Malik took one fumbling footstep and then another forward, felt nothing at all like strength move through his body. It was wrath in his muscles and in his bones that gave him the power to ball up his fist and crash it into Altair’s unresisting face. It was wrath that filled his chest with air too-too hot to contain and burst out of his mouth as an unwavering _scream_ louder-and-longer-and-deeper than his eagle body had ever produced. The sound was cut short only by Altair’s reactive rebuttal as he punched Malik in the face and then immediately caught at his clothes and his face to pull him upright and stare at him with wide-wild-eyes.

_Stupid, stupid human_ was the only thing Malik could think. Stupid, stupid human and fear-and-death-and-helplessness.

\--

Instinct took over where thought faltered. Altair could not _think_ a single thought, couldn’t put things into any kind of logical order or make sense of the things his eyes insisted he see. His ears were ringing with the wrecked rage in Malik’s screams but even that didn’t mean anything _real_. 

The need to survive was real. The threat against their lives was real.

Malik was injured and they were standing poorly armed in the center of a miniature massacre. Altair’s body moved as it had always moved: retrieve weapons, remove evidence and flee. He pushed Malik onto the horse he’d come in on and got on the one he had stolen and led them away.

\--

The sun was low-low in the sky before Altair left the horses between here-and-there and pulled Malik off the beaten path. They picked their way out into the wilderness beyond until they came upon a stream of limited water and a comfortable hollow Altair frequented. It had the makings of a permanent assassin hideout: stocked full of bandages and emergency provisions. 

“Let me look at your wound,” Altair said. His hands were already pulling at Malik’s clothes. The pain that came with pulling the cloth away from the wound was nothing compared to the burn-and-ache of it when he had to lift his arms. Altair cleaned him with a hard touch and made a mess of wasted bandages to cover the damage. By the time he’d finished the sky had grown so dark it was hard to see. “Malik,” Altair said again. He was on his knees at Malik’s side, looking unsure of himself for the first time in so very long. There was a bundle of bandages in his hands and Malik leaned in far enough to bite at the wrinkled skin of Altair’s knuckles. He tasted like spilt blood and murky water. 

The single action seemed to move through Altair like a much grander physical assault. His retreat was swift and permanent. Malik watched the man settle near the exit of their crummy little hiding place. 

“Why would you do this?” Altair asked him from that safe distance, “why would you give up your wings? Why would you make a deal with a Djinn?”

Malik motioned at Altair’s body. _Because you’re mine and you kept forgetting_. 

\--

“Sleep,” Altair said as an answer to the hand that waved at him. To the look on Malik’s human-face that accused him of knowing exactly why an eagle would give up its wings for human feet. His answer was the flat disapproval that came across Malik’s face tempered only by the shadows and the thickness of hair that had grown on his cheeks in the past days. When he relented it was with stilted motion, resolutely disobedient to Altair’s command.

In the darkness, Altair rubbed at his own hair, face caught between two hands, whole body set on the point of shuddering as he tried-and-tried to list every unforgiveable thing he had done (recently).

It was long-long after the sky had extinguished the last of the light and long after Malik had succumbed to sleep when a slinking-red-glow drew up from the ground like a great-animal. It crept toward him on lumbering legs with brilliant-green eyes the whole of its body neither animal nor human but some horrifying combination of the two. 

“What’s this,” the Djinn said as swirled around him like thick-black oily smoke. It reformed on his left side, (closest to Malik) and smiled at him with a glowing-grin. “You shouldn’t feel so very terrible, human, there was no way you could have known.”

“Let him go,” Altair snapped. “Whatever the deal, break it and release him. You said before you don’t want him.”

The Djinn’s smile did not slip but grown broader as his eyes went like clever slits in his face. The whole mutating aura of his body seemed to glimmer with joy at the very words. “A deal is a deal, Altair. Our little bird has three days of freedom left to win. Of course, I’d be willing to give him an advantage if you were willing to do me a favor.”

“The favor I will do for you is to allow you to live. Release Malik.”

The Djinn rolled its bright-green-eyes and slithered to the left, out and away from Malik. “His freedom very much depends on you. The least you can do is give him a voice, yes? Can you imagine the many-many things he must want to say to you?”

Altair looked at Malik, at the curve of his spine and the bulk of the bandages where he’d been wounded. The man was far-from-(truly)-helpless but the great lack of things he knew would be the ultimate end of him. Altair said, “more than a voice, give him everything I know. Let him have the ability to fight and defend himself.”

“You want to make an equal of him?” The Djinn said. “Will that assuage your guilt? Do you think this sudden generosity will redeem you of the things you have done?” Then he waved his hand in the air and rushed forward, solidifying in one single motion into a human form. His hand was a burning glow in the air between them. “I will give him everything you know and you will end nine lives.”

“I don’t serve you,” Altair snapped.

“Nine lives for his, Altair. I will not offer this deal twice.” And the Djinn held his hand out with an impatient little shake. “You have killed more men for less reward.”

“Nine men for his life,” Altair repeated. “Malik cannot be harmed because of what I do.”

“Agreed,” the Djinn said. Then his hand seized Altair’s in a sudden blue-fire.


	6. Chapter 6

_**day five:** _

Malik woke up filled head-to-foot with the most unsettling sensation of _otherness_ he had ever experienced. It came over him like that first moment in this stretched-out-human flesh when everything in the world felt-and-smelled-and-looked-and-tasted-and-sounded different than it ever had before. It may have been easy enough to shake off save for how the feeling seemed to come from the very center of his body: swelling outward from some unknown inner portion that had his skin feeling thin from the effort of containing this unfamiliar thing.

By the time he stumbled up to his feet, the confusion in his head had bubbled into his chest and his mouth was moving in the shape of human words like: “What happened? What is this?” 

Altair was awake, already, sitting some distance away with pink-cheeks and bright-wide-eyes as he looked at Malik so intensely it seemed unreal. His weapons were spread out around him in a clumsy half-circle as he attempted to clean-or-take-stock of them. Perhaps he’d even gone so far as to disarm before he tried to sleep (something he did not always do). “Malik?” Altair said. He got to his feet with one long graceful motion and stepped closer. 

Guilt-and-greed-and-worry were heavy in his face and the motion of his body. Altair touched him and Malik shoved him back with greater strength than he’d had the day before. (No, no greater, but more aware. As if his body had suddenly been taught how best to move.) “I can’t talk,” Malik said to him, “I haven’t ever been able to talk unless the Djinn is here.” No, but there was no Djinn unless he fancied making himself into a bit of pottery or a rolled up scrap of carpet. “What did you do?”

\--

The interesting thing was not that an eagle-turned-human was standing in front of him with the very same look of disbelief and annoyance as every-single-one-of his teachers demanding _what he had done_ but the authority with which Malik said the words. It was a voice to the thoughts Altair had always-believed must have been hidden in Malik’s head. But they were out now, followed after with, “you made a deal with the Djinn.”

“As you did,” Altair said. “At least I know what I’ve gotten myself into!”

“You couldn’t possibly,” Malik snapped back at him. “I have watched you many years, Altair. You would run into walls if left unattended.” The man stood there with one hand against the side of his head, with the heel of his hand digging in tight like he was trying to push all these new-things out and to the side. When the new knowledge would not budge he tipped his head back and opened his mouth in an unspoken protest before he flexed his jaw and looked back down-and-at-him. “What did you do?”

“I gave you a voice so you could explain yourself and I gave him the knowledge you need to defend yourself. Two things you overlooked yourself.”

“A voice so that _I_ could _explain myself_? What imagined injury have I inflicted on you that I should be obliged to explain it?” 

“You’re a man!”

“One that did nothing to harm you!” Malik shouted back. 

Like-it-just-occurred to him, Altair was shouting, “you threw me in the river!”

Oh, but the anger in Malik’s face was so much more dangerous than it had been only just last night. He wasn’t defenseless now but full of every bit of knowledge that Altair had. His hands were in fists when he hissed out, “you deserved it and worse.”

“Because I was not the man you thought I was?” 

\--

There were too many words, far-far too many words tangled up inside of Malik’s throat to make sense. The feeling came over him like an intolerable heat, all red-and-hot-and-swollen inside of him. (Like the Djinn itself had crawled into his chest to spit curses with his tongue.) Malik’s body was _trembling_ just _shaking_ when he said, “you are a terrible, spoiled man filled with spite and arrogance!” 

“You are weak,” Altair said back. But the volume dropped out of his voice and for one moment there was a very-nearly visible shiver in his face. It came-and-went so quickly that it might have been nothing but imagination. But the expectation on his face, the call in his voice that beckoned-and-demanded revenge could not be fabricated. 

“I will say this one-time-only. Listen carefully to the words because I have picked them from a great litany of worthless sounds you humans spew forth from your mouths. These words have seared themselves into my chest like a great brand so know that when I say them it is not easily or frivolously.” Malik waited until Altair’s-smug-face was looking right at him. The stance of his indifference like a great monument against any slights Malik could lay on him. “I know exactly what sort of man you are, Altair. I have watched you these many years as you grew from an idiot child to a fearsome man. I have travelled at your back from your home in Masyaf to the blood-soaked streets of the cities where you complete your missions. I have seen you at your worst and at your best. I have watched you when you thought there was nobody else to see. That you are an arrogant, hateful, mean-spirited man to men you deem beneath you is not a surprise to me. That you are filled with such self-hate and doubt that you cannot bear is not a surprise to me. I know this all, every single bit of it, and I love you.”

Altair’s lips curled away from his teeth and he hissed (so quiet and so low), “weak.”

Malik punched him. “Shall we speak in a language you still understand?”

\--

The fight was not brief-but-swift. It was not brutal-but-ruthless. Malik was a flawless mirror to every of Altair’s actions. They did not collapse in the aftermath with some greater understanding of the other but fall against the ground with blood in their mouths and bruises like raised ridges all over their flesh.

Malik’s fingers pulled at his neck-and-face and Altair shoved him flat against the ground with the full of his shivering-strength. The kiss tasted blood-red and hot, smeared across their faces under the damning bright sunlight of the day. It was not the same as the time before, when Malik-was-a-mute who knew nothing and Altair was a man who knew less. 

No, this time, Malik rolled them in the dirt with a grunt of effort and two tight hands around Altair’s arms. They were idiots in the dust, thrusting and grinding against the other while their teeth-and-lips finished the fight their fists had started. 

There was nothing satisfying about the release (when it came) save for how Malik relented at last. 

\--

It was not the invasion of human knowledge that left his body feeling bruised-and-strange. Perhaps it would have been a kindness if it were. This gift that Altair had so selflessly (strangled him with) given to him could have been capable of leaving his body feeling flayed to the nerves. Humans had always been strange to him; so caught up in imaginary rules as they struggled to ignore their base instincts. 

But it was something far more sobering, a quiet kind of realization that came over him as Altair looked at him with such deeply-grateful-relief when Malik moved away from him. That the man was terrified was no surprise to him. Altair had long made a habit out of climbing towers and hiding with animals (like Malik) to relieve himself of the burden of other humans. There was no mistaking that fear in him now, the nakedness of it was astounding through human eyes. Malik sat back in the dirt with his human legs spread out in front of him. He let out a sigh through his bloody human mouth and looked down at his bloody human knuckles crusted over with dirt. 

“What promise did you give the Djinn?” Malik asked.

Altair’s body made little sound as it moved. It cast a slim shadow over Malik’s dirty hands and outstretched legs. When he spoke his voice was toneless-and-hollow as it had been the many long days of this wretched week (as it always had been with the other humans, as it had never been with Malik-the-bird). Altair said, “I owe him nine lives. What deal did you make?”

Malik smiled and he could not begin to understand why his face would stretch itself in such a way. He said, “that does not matter now. The deal is already done.” Then, after a pause, “surely your Master waits for you at Masyaf. I don’t remember him being so lenient about your blatant waste of time.”

The silence that followed was a painful drag. Altair did not rise, he did not object, but sit there in indecision. “Will you come?”

“You doubt me now?” Malik asked. He looked up at Altair then—when he could trust his face not to waver, trusted his eyes not to water, trusted the strength of his shoulders not to falter and the reserve in his gut not to soften. 

Altair did not shirk from meeting his eyes but nod his head once before he pushed himself up to his feet. He looked-away-at the very last moment when he said, “no.”

\--

They travelled with ease in the aftermath. Malik’s knew knowledge gave him the skills to steal a horse without being caught. He followed Altair with the same intense diligence that he had as a bird in the sky. 

Half the day passed in silent travel. It was only in the evening, when Masyaf was finally in sight, that Malik drew to a short stop and the monotony of his horse’s echoing steps dulled into a sharp spot in his hearing. Altair turned back almost instantly, guided his own horse back to stand alongside of Malik’s. 

“We both know I am not an Assassin,” Malik said. “I will not be welcome in Masyaf. You got and I will follow later.”

“What difference will a matter of hours make?” Altair asked. “Will you be more welcome after the sky gets dark?”

Malik rolled his eyes. “Your presence alone will provide enough distraction that I could slip through the gates unnoticed. Anyone that enters with you is almost certainly seen and talked about. What are the tenets of your brotherhood? Hide in plain sight? Who can do that when they are paired with you?”

Altair scoffed at the words. “Do what you will.” Then he turned back toward Masyaf and urged his horse into a gallop.

\--

Malik made a fire, not out of necessity. He sat next to it in the dull heat of the fading day and scratched at the fresh wounds on his arm and the long scratch that ran down his neck from just under his jaw to his collarbone. His fingernails were filthy with blood-and-dirt the very same way the combination had seemed to cement itself into the wrinkles of his knuckles. 

Still he sat, with nothing but this foul-smelling body and these strange aches-and-pains and the awful intermittent itching of human flesh. He sat with the things-Altair-knew and the prickling-certainty of his own ultimate failure. Eagles were creatures-of-habit and instinct, fearsome predators out in the wild where wings and talons were formidable assets. But eagles-were-stupid-birds, taken in so easily by creatures with glowing-green-eyes that made sweet-sounding-promises. Malik was filled head-to-foot with human things that lapped over the parts of him that remembered soaring-freedom and feral heat of instinct. 

“Come now, Djinn,” he said to the fire. 

Oh and it grew-and-grew like a swelling beast that grew great-and-powerful legs. The glistening red-and-orange of the fire blurred in long black stripes that contracted as the beast moved. Its massive paws against the dirt as it pulled itself form the embers. Its face was a great cat, brilliantly orange with uncommonly green eyes and yellowed-teeth as sharp as Malik’s talons had ever been. It stretched before him, coiling to the right of his body so that it’s body grew-and-grew. The chest of it as round so round Malik’s arms might not have been able to contain it, the feline stretch of its spine easily longer than Malik was tall and the powerful fullness of its back legs kicking at the dying fire. 

“Do you like it, bird? I favor the tiger, I think. Another of Allah’s most beautiful things.” The Djinn’s voice was unchanged even in this body it had chosen. It went around-and-around him before it came to a lazy stop before him, flopping easily into the dirt as its flat-pink tongue licked at a stray bit of dust caught in the hazy-orange flames of its paw. “Have you come to admit to defeat?”

“I am not defeated,” Malik said. “Altair loves me. This is not something I have ever doubted. However, I know now that you will not agree unless he can speak the words. He will not.”

“Oh, little bird. What of your faith in him? Is it so easily shaken?” 

“My faith in him remains the same as it has always been. I have faith that he will be the same man tomorrow that he is today and that the day after will yield no different results. I do not love him because he is easy, Djinn. So I have come instead with a proposition. I will tell you why you have made such a deal with a bird and then you will release me from our bet with the wish I have earned.”

The Djinn laughed and the sound came like a low rumble from the center of its great furry chest. Flames grew bright here-and-there and the whole length of its body seemed to flicker-and-then contract again with the sound. “Very well,” it said, “you fumble a guess at my reasons. If you can guess them, I will release you. You will have your wish.”

Malik nodded. “You spoke once of a war and your reluctance to join it. You said that everyone must choose a side eventually. You labeled Assassins as some of the most useful humans. You speak poorly of Altair with great ease and often but you were there at every moment I had doubt to prod me into action. You can understand that I assumed this was all for your own amusement—what are we to you but some sort of grotesque play? You talk of eternity and our lives will pass us by in only a blink of your eyes.” 

The Djinn yawned and crossed its great paws before it with such unimpressed boredom.

“But none of this has amused you. None of this has been frivolous and wasteful. You need Altair, but not as he is today. You need the man that you have seen at my side, the one that is stripped of his arrogance and his disdain for his fellow humans. This is the task you have set me on, the one that you are determined I should accomplish. Whatever part in the war Altair has to play, it is far more significant than I can guess at—I am only a bird. The curious thing is that you did not allow time to wear Altair down. Surely, he could have come to these realizations of humility and charity on his own.”

“You have too much faith in the man,” the Djinn said. But he did not dismiss any of Malik’s words as untruths.

“You asked Altair for nine lives. That’s a curious request to make of a man you are working so hard to redeem. You have the power to kill and yet you do not. These humans tell the stories of your kind—the Djinn who are filled with spite and trickery. These nine men have hurt you in some way. They’ve found a way to keep themselves save from your wrath and you have done all of this not to further the cause of the war you use as an excuse but to get the revenge these nine dirty clay men would deny you.”

And the Djinn was hot-as-hell, burning through the long black stripes across its body until the ground itself was scorched black from the heat. Its impassive face went furious with white heat until the anger spread through its body. The black-stripes were stark contrast to the white-and-blue fire between them. The Djinn lifted its body and stood before him. “You are a very clever bird, Malik.”

“Release me from our bet and give me the wish I am owed.”

The Djinn put one paw against his chest, shoved him flat to the ground and crawled over him so the long-stringy bits of its flame-like fur left browned-burnt-marks on his clothes. “Altair will take the lives I am owed. You will never speak to him the things you know now, not ever.”

Malik nodded.

The Djinn lifted his paw and turned away. He did not say another word before he turned again-and-again in a circle that settled back into the slim and tired little flame that Malik had made. 

\--

Al Mualim congratulated him on a easily-completed mission. He did not question Altair about the ‘mystery assassin with no memory’ either because he was not concerned about it or because the Rafiq had not kept to his threat. There were two messages from the Rafiq saying he had heard nothing about an eagle being killed.

“Rest,” Al Mualim told him, “tomorrow you leave for Jerusalem.”

So Altair went. He washed and dressed in fresh clothes. He ate his fill and ignored the many questioning stares that followed after his back. When the sky was blackened but not yet fully dark, he climbed the tallest part of the castle to sit beside the wooden plank where Malik had taken up residence. He looked over the whole of the village that stood in Masyaf’s shadow. The men-and-women that moved in petty circles and filled their days with the nothingness of survival. He hated them, just a little if just for a moment, and then looked down at the men still trying to practice their moves with Rauf. 

Malik came silently, pulling himself up to sit on the wooden plank fearlessly. His legs dangled off the side as he sat. His clothes were stolen from some woman’s laundry—ill-fitting at best. But they were not the mistaken robes of an assassin and the plainness of the cloth offered him a better disguise than the dirty white robes. “No rats today?” Malik said.

Altair smiled—so very fleetingly—and shrugged. He didn’t look at Malik (didn’t think he even had a right to, really) but said, “I always wondered what things you would say to me if you had a voice to say them. There was a time I thought I knew and now I am not sure.”

“The great Altair questions himself!” Malik said. He spread his arms wide the way he once ruffled his wings in annoyance and the gesture tipped his balance backward just enough that gravity pulled at him and a moment of panic had them both drawing in quick breaths before Malik righted himself again. Altair’s hand across Malik’s thigh felt indecent (and it was, wasn’t it) but Malik’s hand over the back of his was far more forgiving than hi beak tearing bits of flesh away. “I have thought many things during our time here. I have ranted at your idiocy. I have raved at these lesser humans’ abuse of you. I have screamed injustice at your repeated mating with the useless human females.”

“I would not have guessed the last would upset you so greatly.”

“If you had done it again, I would have ripped their eyes from their sockets. Even you could have divined my reasons, I’m sure.” Malik shrugged as if the admission was so easily pushed away. Then he looked out toward the village of little houses still visible in the fading light. “If you do not plan to make use of your own bed tonight, then I will happily take it.”

Altair motioned toward his home. Malik nodded and got up to his feet before he stepped off the edge of the wood plank and fell with all the practiced ease of a true assassin. (A master assassin, even.) 

\--

It was easy enough to find and enter Altair’s home. It was well-kept and oft-abandoned. Malik ate the food that was brought for Altair and made a comfortable place for himself in the man’s bed. The sky went dark-as-pitch before Altair returned. Malik did not play at sleeping but watched Altair move in the dark. His ears strained to hear the rustle of clothes before Altair was sliding down to lay next to him. 

“Sleep well, bird,” Altair said. “Tomorrow we leave for Jerusalem.”


	7. Chapter 7

_**day six:** _

Altair woke up with a sudden-startle of abruptly aborted motion. His hand was halfway to a knife hidden beneath the cushion by his head when he remembered the disgruntled-little-noise at his side came from _Malik_ and there was no danger to be found in him. His half-asleep mind was grasping at trivial little realizations: the cool dip of recently abandoned space to his right, the shuffle of bare feet on his floor and the crisp edge of the coming dawn breaking into his home. 

“Come back,” Altair said before he was too awake to allow it. He rolled onto his side, looked up at Malik where the man stood stripping away his foul-and-soiled clothing. (The man had not changed in _days_.) He expected a sharp rebuke, some reprimand for laziness when the day loomed over their heads and a great many tasks needed accomplishing. 

But he did not expect Malik to come back to him (perhaps he should have, perhaps he should never-not-once-ever have doubted the man would come). He had not expected the sleep-warm-heat of his skin, or the long bare stretch of his body as it pressed close to him. Malik rolled him onto his back and settled over him, stretched across his body from where he balanced on his knees across Altair’s thighs with his elbows to the cushions on either side of Altair’s neck. 

“All these things you put into my head,” Malik said. His voice was a low-pull of sound beneath the groaning awareness of the day. “I lay at your side in the night and I think of all the ways I could touch you. I dream of them and I _yearn_ for them. Maybe it was better before I knew.” 

“Ignorance is rarely better, although sometimes easier to bear,” Altair said. He raised one of his hands to press against Malik, slid along the strength of his arm and up onto the smooth skin of his back. 

“Those women you mated with,” Malik said. Oh and how easily he pressed into the purposeful touch of Altair’s hands. How his body arched up into the hand on his back and pressed down against Altair’s hand on his chest. “They were nothing to you. You used me.”

“I did,” Altair agreed. He tipped his head and watched the way Malik’s eyes looked down at his mouth, at the dampness on his lips where he licked them. “You did not seem to mind so much then.”

Malik’s voice was a rough chuckle of noise. His hand against Altair’s chest was nothing at all like a soft-sweet-touch but something a great deal more like a threat. He was touching Altair nowhere else as he perched above him suspended like a great beast. “I am an eagle, human. I come from the faraway sky, where things like you are curious little spots in the distance. I am a fierce and relentless _predator_ capable of far greater feats of bloody warfare than you. These human morals you have poured into my head sit crookedly in my head.” But the words did not change the way Malik leaned into his touch. 

Altair shoved Malik over, laid against his naked body so the weight of his body pushed Malik’s slowly-but-surely into the cushions. His fingers swept through the inky-black of Malik’s hair and pulled. Malik’s neck was long, arched and _exposed_. Altair pressed his mouth against it and shivered at the needy-little-exhale of sound just as his lips touched to the rough-skin there. “You are not an eagle here,” Altair said.

Malik’s legs were around his body in a grip so tight the pain it brought felt heated and blunt. His fingernails drew blood on Altair’s back as he let out a noise almost like a growl. But it was not until his fingers were in Altair’s hair that he had enough leverage to pull Altair away. There he looked at him his eyes every bit as-bright-and-lethal as they had been in his eagle-body. He said, “I see no shame in giving you what you so obviously want. It would give it gladly and often if it was what you wanted.”

“But,” Altair said. He shook his head to free Malik’s tight fingers from the tender strands of hair and reached down to pry the man’s thighs from around his body. They were sitting close-enough-to-feel the heat of each other and yet farther-apart in that moment than-ever before.

“My kind mate with only one and forever.” Malik crossed his legs in front of him, let the strangest-saddest smile creep across his face. His hand against the stubborn deadness of Altair’s blank-faced-expression was numbing. Altair wanted to bite him, or to fight him, or to deny the assertion that he couldn’t be faithful to one now-and-forever and that if it were to be anyone (in the whole world) it would be Malik who had never-failed him and who knew him and who loved him despite the many terrible things Altair (was) had done. But Malik let his hand drop and said, “we should prepare to leave. Jerusalem is a long journey.”

\--

They rode endlessly, through the heat of the day and the cool fall of the evening. They snuck into the city hidden in the tight clutch of white-clad scholars. Altair was yawning-as-he-ran, across so many rooftops in the breaking dark of night. They found the grate of the bureau just as the Rafiq was moving to close it for the night.

“Ah,” the Rafiq said with a dismissive little curl of his lips. “I received warning you were coming.” He waited until Altair-and-Malik were on the ground before he closed the grate and then turned to look at them with the same sour disapproval as before. His voice was a high-wheeze of disgust as he said, “safety and peace brother. There is food and fresh clothes if you require them. I am retiring for the night.”

When they were alone, Malik said, “what did you do to this one?”

Altair’s lips were a curl of pride-and-shame when he said, “I once broke his nose and he thinks I slept with his wife.”

“Did you?” Malik asked.

“I did not, but I allow him to believe it. He does not bother me so long as he hates me.” Altair crouched by the fountain in the wall and used his hand to cup gulps of water into his mouth. He poured it over his head and scrubbed at the sweat and the dirt of such a quick journey from his scalp. 

Malik did the same when Altair stood. They sat in exhausted slumps by the wall as they ate the paltry little offerings left out for them. “What is your mission in Jerusalem?” Malik asked. They had made a day of not speaking, but the silence had stretched and bent and coiled out in the open. Now that it was contained again in to so close a space it seemed suffocating and insurmountable.

“I am to retrieve something for Al Mualim,” Altair said. He waved his hand dismissively. “It could have been easily accomplished by any assassin save for how important the item I’m retrieving is to the Brotherhood.”

“That is not all,” the Djinn said as it crept out of the long shadow in the corner. It pulled itself forward as smoke forming into a misshapen man with long-spindle-thin fingers feeding into bony-thin arms and up and up into a flattened face with two great glowing green eyes. It did not materialize fully. “Robert De Sable,” the Djinn said, “one of the nine.” Its smile was a crack in the dark smoke of its body before it was gone again, snapped back into shadows and turned to nothing.

Altair sighed, “and that.”

“I will go with you,” Malik said.

Altair said, “I would be grateful.” But he did not look at Malik long, looked back at his hands, and cleared his throat as if he intended to say words that he never brought himself to say before letting out a soft noise and lapsing into silence.


	8. Chapter 8

_**day seven:** _

“What was your deal with the Djinn?” Altair had woken up with the question on his lips—hours ago now, back in the bureau with angry-ears listening in. Malik had been stripped to the waist, washing in the shallow water of the fountains set into the wall. His hair was wet-and-glistening black and Altair wanted so very much to push his hand through it with the same ease he had once scratched Malik’s feathers.

Discretion prevented him from putting voice to the question and from allowing himself to be pulled too near to Malik at all. They labored through the morning—eating, gathering their weapons, hearing the information the Rafiq had to share with him and the lecture he inevitably felt he needed to share. The man was old-now and withered, long since past the point of real usefulness. He said, ‘try to remember our Creed, Altair. The cost of innocent lives is steeper than even you would pay willingly.’

Altair rolled his eyes. His tongue was wet with the words (all lives weigh the same, we are all guilty men) but he did not speak them. 

Here, now, waiting in a rooftop garden for a curious guard to stop tailing them, there was nobody to hear-and-find the words strange. Malik was curved around his body with the weight of his thigh across Altair’s and the bony point of his elbow digging into his ribs. The words were as silky as a lover’s midnight promise and Altair felt a heat on his face at the implications of the tone. 

“My deal is complete.”

“You’ve said this. If it is something you do not wish to share, say as much.” But what right did Altair have to be making demands of Malik, really? He had given up nothing but nine lives of other men. That sacrifice would hardly inconvenience him and it certainly would not rob him of the magnificent freedom that wings must provide.

Malik let out a breath through his nose. “The Djinn bet I could not make you love me in seven days.”

That could have ended disastrously. “What was the cost if you had lost?” Altair asked.

“I would serve him until I died,” Malik said, “my kind do not live long. This body the Djinn gave me is very young in comparison. It was an acceptable risk.”

“I think it’s safe,” Altair said even though he had no idea if it was safe or not. He had stopped listening for the guards, but the stifling warmth of the garden was intolerable. With only a little maneuvering he managed to push himself up-and-out. Malik was right at his back, falling easily into step at his back.

\--

Human-minds were not predator-minds. Human-minds were full of things, so many different things, and weighed down with morals and values. It fed into a pit in the bottom of his belly that felt a lot like something called guilt. Malik did not understand guilt, did not like the feeling when it came over him. The sharp and dullness of it as he stood just beyond the slumped-over body of the dying old man. Altair’s kill had been efficient as possible, as kind as any death could be, and yet the ease with which Altair killed this lesser human did not bring Malik a sense of pride.

“Why?” Malik said before he could stop himself. 

“Why what?” Altair asked back. His voice was not even a whisper just beyond the mouth of the entrance into Solomon’s Temple. It was arrogance to think that he could not be caught, arrogance to think that he should be held in such high regard by the other humans he lived with. 

“Why did you kill this one?”

Altair looked at the old man lying face-down in death. Impatience and ego overtook him and he was not the man that Malik had spent so many evenings with or even the blushing-child of a man who could not tolerate the idea that Malik made a desperate bet out of love. This was a piggish creature, posturing with its chest puffed out. “He was in the way.”

Malik might have said more, tried to argue innocence and guilt but Altair was already finished listening to him. They crept through the tunnel, crawled-and-climbed to a vantage point that offered them the best view. Altair was crouching, tipped slightly forward as his lips moved to count the men that stood between them and the artifact that Al Mualim had sent (them) Altair to retrieve.

“That’s Robert De Sable,” Altair said. His voice was a hushed-hiss of breath. “Do you have the dagger the Rafiq gave you?”

“I do,” Malik said. “What are you thinking? Altair do not act rashly—”

But Altair had already left him, running headlong toward Robert with footsteps just loud enough to announce his presence. Altair’s arrogance croaking out of him like a battle cry as he shouted after Robert. Malik followed him, landed on the ground with nothing but a dagger that was a poor impersonation of the talons he’d once commanded.

\--

Many times, now, Altair had found himself in the last precious seconds of his own life. Many times he had the undesirable opportunity to feel the last primal sparks of his mind firing in hard bursts just before his vision went black and pain dragged him down into a blackness like death. It came to him again, this time, with Robert De Sable’s massive hand around his throat and the tightening grip of his fist squeezing the breath from his body.

The man’s words were slurs in the air between them—hardly recognizable as anything but weighted breath. Altair’s feet were barely touching the ground and the lightheaded intensity of the pain robbed his arms of their sure strength. His fingers scrabbled uselessly against Robert’s grip even as the man looked away from him. His teeth were yellow blurs between his pink lips but his smile coiled up at the edges as his words wheezed out a welcoming-sort-of-warning.

Malik was standing in the center of men with leering grins and heavy swords. He was only one-man (not even that) with a dagger barely bigger than his hand. But his face was set in that scowl of determination that betrayed his intent. 

(No.)

Robert threw Altair as if he were nothing-at-all and the impact of his body against the crumbling wall sent a shower of rocks falling in an avalanche that blocked Altair’s path back to Malik. His body rolled against the ground, bruised by the fall of rocks and the sure quickness of Robert’s counterattacks. He was on his knees gasping for breath with his hands dug deep into debris and a race-race-racing heartbeat clogging his ears.

The Djinn was there, in full magnificence, bare skinned with black tattoos on his arms and chest and an iridescent orange glow raging up just below the surface of his skin. His eyes were green-and-glowing as his hands burnt blue fire at his fingertips and he was shouting, “get up! Get up you useless boy! Get up!”

But Altair-couldn’t-catch-his breath long enough to force his shivering-soupy-muscles to move. Mortal panic gave way to a dull gray certainty and the last few seconds of consciousness were a peaceful blur as his fingers twitched at the sense-memory of Malik’s body so very close to his.

\--

There were five men besides Robert De Sable. Five men made of mortal heights and average strength (as far as could be discerned). They were armed and ready to fight. It would have been a challenge for several men to overwhelm them but Malik was only one: poorly equipped and sorely lacking for back up.

“Kill him,” Robert said. “We will ride to Masyaf and deal with the old man after.”

Malik did not wait for them to attack him. He was a hunter, not often hunted, and the heartlessness of survival served him well in the center of a circle of men far better suited to their bodies than him. One man fell with a bleeding wound in his gut, another knocked over backward after a brief struggle, but the third man managed to cut into Malik’s arm deep enough to draw sick-red-pain and a wet-roll of blood. 

It was too difficult to be surrounded and overtaken by human-things and watch for the arrival of others. Malik was backed against a wall when Robert caught him by the left arm. His meaty hand circled Malik’s wrist and wrenched his arm down and then back behind his body. The wall was an immovable force against Malik’s face as he struggled to find enough purchase to earn his freedom. The strain of Robert’s grip on his arm grew from restrictive to painful the higher up his arm was shoved. Blood ran freely as his skin tore further as the wound gaped open. 

His scream was a wet splatter of spit across stone seconds before he felt something start to give way in his arm. There was a popping noise to the right of them and then a gust of wind that swept all of the light out of the room. In the confusing dark Robert’s grip loosened enough to earn Malik his freedom and he threw himself out-and-away in a mad, desperate rush for the exit. There were voices at his back shouting in protest that fueled the terror of his legs but he knocked against something in the dark that fell across the floor and broke. A dim-golden glow rolled into the open and Robert’s panicked shout of protest was the only reason Malik closed his fist around the glow and tucked it into his robes as he ran.

\--

The panic followed him (whistling) out of the blackness of his dreams. It burst into full life with a guttural cry rattling over his tongue. There was blood in his mouth and one-two (maybe more) cracks in his chest (surely) as he shoved himself to his feet. His throat felt thickened and the skin there was swollen and raw. 

“Malik!” he shouted into the dimness of the afternoon. He found himself looking at the sky, searching for some sight of the bird that Malik-was-no-longer before he was on his feet again. A rain of rocks and bits of other debris fell away from him as he moved, billowing out in a tight gray cloud in his wake. There was no way back into the temple, only a short path away from it.

His heart was thud-thud-thudding in his chest faster-and-harder than it had since he was a scared-and-stupid child watching his father’s last living breaths. He looked out at the world with the knowledge that he was well-and-truly alone. There was no way to know if Malik had survive or where he might have gone should he have escaped. It was habit-not-thought that moved his body forward, down and in toward the city and the safety of the bureau there.

\--

Malik ran-and-ran until he found himself suddenly standing inside the assassin’s bureau in Jerusalem. The cushions he’d slept on last night were still dimpled with the same of his body and the plates he’d used to eat from were still sitting with lazy crumbs where they’d been abandoned. The Rafiq stood in front of him with the Djinn’s strange green eyes as the world-itself seemed to waver-and-shift around him. The walls stood but seemed impermanent. 

“How?” Malik demanded. He had been running in a dim tunnel only moments ago, clutching at the weight of the golden trinket secured in the front of his robes. There had been only the thin hope of survival set against the loud sound of the men at his back.

“I am a Djinn, bird. I wield magnificent power. This,” it motioned at the bureau as it seemed to snap suddenly into place with a staggering jolt of gravity that knocked Malik off balance, “is nothing more than a party trick. Something my kind would do to amuse themselves.”

The blood on Malik’s left arm had started to cool, tightening in a congealed mess that stuck the cloth of his sleeves to his skin and turned to grit in the crook of his elbow. The inflamed wound was made all the more painful by the damage done beneath the skin. Malik clutched at it. 

“That treasure you found in Solomon’s Temple has caused a hundred wars, stripped kings of their power and laid waste to entire civilizations. In the years that follow, it will do the same. Countless men will fall to it.” The Djinn nodded at the golden ball inside of Malik’s robes but it did not move to take it. “The choice you make now, to trust Altair with it or to give it back to me will shape history.”

“If you have seen what will happen, you already know what choice I make.”

The Djinn lifted-and-lowered its shoulders. “Free will is a lie but it is a comfortable lie. Men wish to know they have some chance to change their fates, to find the destiny they are sure awaits them. But we are all only that which we were created to be.”

Malik pulled the golden ball out, held the weight of it in his bloodied right hand. It was a plain thing in the full light of day, barely worth taking note if not for the golden gleam of it. The weight was minimal for the metal it appeared to be made of but it hardly seemed capable of the evil the Djinn claimed it was. His hand tightened around it when the Djinn moved forward.

“I could not take the Apple from you even if I desired it. I promised Altair you would not be harmed because of his actions. I am powerless against De Sable. The filthy man made me swear it.” Its hand closed around the wound on Malik’s shoulder and drew the pain away with a gentle-heat. 

“I will not give this to you,” Malik said. “You have constructed an elaborate maze of lies and tricks to bring us to this moment. I do not yet know your true purpose but I will not give you anything capable the terrible power you claim this _Apple_ contains.”

The Djinn neither smiled not frowned. It did not protest but incline its head and disappear from the room with a puff of rich-black-smoke leaving an empty space in front of Malik. The only proof it had ever been there at all was the split open sleeve on his left arm and the streaks of blood coming from a healed-scar.

\--

Altair crossed rooftop-after-rooftop with monotonous motion before he flung himself into the bureau. He had every intention of demanding the Rafiq gather every man the Assassins had in the city to find Malik(‘s body). He was chewing the words over with deliberate malice, trying so very hard to keep from striking out at the innocent men that crowded at all sides as he’d snuck back into the city. The need for blood was a dark heaviness in his chest that had proven nearly impossible to overcome when he was jostled into a mad man before being shoved into a woman carrying a pot. She shrieked outrage and he saw a shade of red he had never before imagined.

The whole of the city would burn if that was what it took to return Malik to him. These were the words he had chosen to shout at the Rafiq and the words that dried in his throat when he landed on the floor of the bureau and found himself looking at Malik. The man stood there in borrowed-Assassin robes looking curiously at a ball in his hand. When he looked up there was an endearing relief to his expression and his mouth opened to offer some greeting or condemnation for Altair’s behavior. 

But it did not come, it was not given a moment to be uttered. Altair pulled him forward by his right arm, heard the ball hit the floor and roll away seconds before Malik’s body hit his. Their mouths were blunt-bloody-obstacles mashed together and it didn’t-even-matter. Malik kissed with _intensity_ unlike anything Altair had ever felt. Malik kissed with his mouth and his tongue and his fingernails drawing blood wherever they landed. His arms were over-Altair’s shoulders pulling him down to fit against Malik’s body. 

Nothing (not-a-thing) made as much sense to him as the sounds in Malik’s throat, as the familiar taste of his tongue, as the need in his touch and the absolute loyalty in his face. Altair kissed him again-and-again, worked at the laces of his clothes, pressed and pulled and pushed until his hands were against the heated-bare-skin of Malik’s body. There was thick-dark hair on his chest that was coarse under his hands, slick sweat at the sides of his body where the muscles were thick against his ribs and a perfect curve to his spine. Malik grunted a pleased-and-surprised noise when Altair’s hands tightened on his ass and pulled him forward. 

They stumbled, landed on the floor with Malik on his back, cushions awkward behind his head and Altair knocking their bodies together from hip-to-mouth with a mad scramble to be close-close-closer.

\--

It started as a whisper, a barely-heard-thing that was a senseless noise buzzing around Malik’s ears. Altair’s voice as an undertone even as his mouth sucked at Malik’s skin here-and-there. His hands were tight-as-claws in Malik’s clothes pulling them out of shape as their bodies fell into the same rhythm. 

“I’m so stupid,” Altair said, “I’m so stupid.” Again and again the words crumbling into each other until they were just one long sound. Malik’s hands pushed Altair’s hood down off his head, curled around the nape of his neck and pulled him back up to where their foreheads pressed together. Altair had stripped their skin half-bare; his hand was wrapped around their two dicks. 

His eyes were closed with a quiver at his lips as he mouthed the same words when his breath left him. Malik kissed his face and held onto him with both hands as his body fell into that mindless space where nothing was more important than the impending orgasm. 

It was after that, when they were both heaving for breath and Altair still hadn’t moved away, that Malik said, “you are not stupid. Selfish, perhaps. Short-sighted but not stupid.”

“Careless,” Altair said grimly. He did not move away but fixed their clothing in the tiny space between their bodies. When Malik pulled him back in place to lay against his chest he came willingly. “How did you get away?”

“The Djinn,” Malik said. He looked down the length of Altair’s back, across the room where the golden ball had rolled. There was no glow now but an ominous dull glint in the shadows. “I recovered the trinket the old man wants,” Malik said. 

Altair turned enough to look at the ball across the room and then settled back in place against Malik. “What you said before, one and for forever. I want it.”

Malik smiled, stroked his fingers through Altair’s hair as the man’s arms tightened around his body. “You stupid human,” he said, “you’ve always had it.” 

\--

The day did not end simply because Altair was finished with it. There was still the matter of securing the strange golden ball in a scrap of something and hiding it away in a convenient pouch. Malik wouldn’t let him hold it—did not give a reason or even the outright command to keep from touching it. He simply handled it himself until it was safely put away in a pouch and then offered it to Altair.

“Robert De Sable said he was riding for Masyaf,” Malik said. “Your brothers need you.”

“Us,” Altair said. They escaped the city before nightfall, reclaimed the horses they’d left in the care of friends and started the long ride back to Masyaf.


	9. Chapter 9

It would always have ended like this; with or without his human. The inevitability of death had never weighed heavily on Malik’s shoulders in the many years of his life. His human had once come to him in the middle of a dark night with his hands shaking in violent turbulence and his eyes filled with something deeper and stronger than fear. The words that poured from him had been a madman’s babble about things they never-could, never-would see and the gray-dimness of death. The sins of Altair’s long-life compounded in his chest until the only thing his human could feel at all was terror and grief. Malik had put his arms around the human and hummed to him until the anxiety passed. All living things died. 

Malik was always going to die. It did not grieve him to die but wrench in his belly like a foul-tasting thing that he should die like _this_. That the instrument of his demise was a foul-smiling little fool that slaughtered one of their children and stole Masyaf from him. This dull-eyed human with bitter ambition that grinned into Malik’s face when he’d been hobbled by hunger and injury. 

“I heard a story once,” Abbas said to him, “about a Djinn and an eagle. Have you heard it?”

\--

But first, it was an attack at Masyaf, Robert De Sable and a host of fools that obeyed him mounting an offensive against the castle. Altair had cut his way through to aid in the defense. Malik was at his side when his master congratulated him and took the Apple from Altair’s outstretched hand. There was a brief spot of peace, the quiet passing of a single day-and-night. Malik slept tight against Altair in his home and thought of the long-years-of-their lives that still waited for them.

But the morning brought men at Altair’s door that dragged him to Al Mualim. The old man was filled with venom and spite and a cruel-sort-of grin as he called Altair a traitor-and-an arrogant ass. 

\--

It was the cold dank darkness of the dungeon where Malik found Altair (laying as if dead) in the aftermath of his punishment. The old man had sentenced him to death that he had not delivered. Malik had stood in the crowd in white-borrowed-robes with the taste of blood on his tongue but he was powerless against so many. It was after, long after Altair’s body was dragged to this abominable place that Malik slithered-and-snuck until he found him. It was Malik that pulled Altair out and away, far from the imagined safety of the castle walls and back into the uncertainty of the open space beyond.

\--

“Why?” Altair demanded in the days that followed. His hands as fists with thick bones pushed tight to the surface. His voice like a clap of thunder and something jagged-and-broken twisting in the center of his body that threw him off balance. The question nagged him and nagged him until he couldn’t bear it.

“Why?” he demanded again.

Malik had no answer. They spent three days caught in an undetermined rage with Altair driven to the point of madness. His last trusted (friend) had betrayed him and labelled him an outlaw and a traitor. It was in the foulest of his moods that the Djinn came like a creeping black smoke to whisper a name into Altair’s ear.

\--

They fell, seven men, in quick succession. Each kill more brutal the one before it until the whole of the world seemed to be on the brink of an all-consuming war. Even the men in the streets—so long brewing with discontent—were pushed to the point of furious revolt. Altair was safe nowhere, not in the cities where the uniform of an assassin brought attacks from fellow assassins and commoners alike, not in the open spaces where soldiers and guards pursued him relentlessly and not even with himself.

They found a momentary sanctuary at Solomon’s Temple. Malik was bruised and sore from a fight and Altair was bleeding (again). He sat in the dirt with his knees bent and his arms tired-and-heavy between them. There was blood on his temple and blood on his robes. It soaked through the slashed parts and clotted with dust and sweat to make patches of mud so thick they seemed wooden. 

Altair said, “I have been a fool, Malik. I have allowed myself to be used as a weapon. I have killed men whose crimes I cannot name for a Master who named me a traitor as soon as I handed him the prize he hungered for. And I have killed these men for a Djinn. I’ve been blinded by my anger and my arrogance.”

Malik knelt at his side, tipped his head to look at Altair’s weary face. His hands clutched at the worn and ragged length of Altair’s arms and the exhaustion felt like something tangible between his fingers. “Sleep a bit,” Malik said. “Let yourself rest and the answers will come.”

Altair’s hands pulled at him until they were laying together in an uncoordinated heap. “You could have had the world, Malik. Why did you choose this?”

“I did not choose _this_. I chose _you._ ” Malik was not a song bird, not a singer, but he hummed as he stroked the back of Altair’s neck until the man fell into a sleep he desperately needed. 

\--

The Djinn came again in all of its resplendent glory, with green eyes that glowed in the dimness and veins of pure fire cracking through its smoke-dark skin. Its voice a watery-little-whisper that set Altair on the path of Robert De Sable. 

Malik lost Altair in the carnage of two converging armies. He was left (uninjured) at an outpost between one group of soldiers and next with no method of travel save for his own feet. On foot the journey took an eternity of time compared to the meager minutes it had taken Altair on horseback.

“He will kill you, you know,” the Djinn said. It appeared as a tiger again, winding around Malik’s body with a massive orange-and-black body. Its voice was dulled in the throat of the animal and the ground beneath its paws charred and blackened. “This is the life you have chosen to give yourself, trailing along after a man who cannot love you in the same manner you have loved him.”

“Where you always such a twisted thing?” Malik asked it, “or did the evil these men inflicted on you change you?”

The Djinn’s answer was a roar before it knocked Malik off the path and out of the way of an onslaught of oncoming soldiers. Its paws were massive against Malik’s clothes but the claws slipped easily through without ripping. It pulled itself to full height and cocked its head to look at him. “The evil done to me is an evil done to the world. I am the instrument of the end of the world. I could try the whole of my life to undo this single act and never successfully atone for it.”

“Then why do you nag me?” Malik demanded, “why do you keep me here when my place is at his side?”

The Djinn dropped back to four paws, “the deed is done and you are free to go.” Its tail swished behind it as it walked away. The whisper of the flames beneath its skin like little licks of heat against the short-hard grass and the gray dust. “I will not keep you from his side in the fight that follows.”

\--

Altair found him again in the space between here-and-there. There was blood in his hair and streaked across his clothing. The wild energy in his face did nothing at all to soothe the pit of dread gathering in Malik’s gut. The Djinn’s final words were as good as a promise of sure death.

“The last man is Al Mualim,” Altair said. “He betrayed us.” 

\--

There was no time to rest or to gather themselves before they were thrown at the horrific battle they found in Masyaf. Al Mualim, the trusted leader of the Assassins had betrayed them all. With the Apple tight in his fist, he had enslaved their minds and played them as puppets. Malik led a group of the youngest-and-least effected against a much larger force of older, more experienced (albeit mindless) assassins as Altair fought his way to Al Mualim.

Altair did not share with him the details of the battle that followed. Malik saw only the inevitable conclusion when the old man fell with bloody disgrace and the Apple was (at last) unable to force its former master’s terrible will. 

\--

Peace did not come easily or quickly to Masyaf or its newly appointed mentor. The first days and weeks were full of troubled nights and troubled days as the recently abused brothers fought against the inevitable conclusion that Al Mualim had betrayed them all. Malik watched-but-did-not participate in the recovery.

Altair did not keep him a secret but he did not proclaim Malik as his mate either. It was not a significant problem in light of the brothers’ intermittent protests and the continuing war against the Templars.

In the calm moments and lulls, Altair found him. 

\--

Years passed, Altair’s reign as mentor was marked by equal successes and failures. 

\--

It was the other moments, the ones trapped behind closed doors and off the side of beaten paths where trouble brewed with growing discontent. Altair grew as a man (no taller, no larger but different) and Malik held fast. 

“This is enough for you?” Altair asked him once. It was long-past dark and the cool water they washed themselves clean with was muddied with dirt, grime and the various fluids their bodies squeezed out in pleasure. Malik was slow with contentment—(glowing, perhaps, with it). Altair was naked still, sitting just at the edge of the low light of the flickering lamp. 

“What else should I want for?”

“Are you the sole living thing unburdened with the need to reproduce?” Altair said. His body had gotten more powerful with age. It was pocked here and there with his missteps and mistakes. There at the edges of his eyes the barest of angry lines had started to form from years of squinting. His light-brown hair was starting to change color—just little strands here and there. It angered Altair to know it because he was a young-man still. 

“I cannot recall if I were ever burdened with such a desire,” Malik said. He shifted his own lazy limbs into something more seemly. Found himself sitting opposite Altair without understanding what the other man felt. It was far from the first time it had happened but it was always the most troubling sensation. “Could you be happy without children?”

“There was a time I believed I could be. But it keeps growing in my chest, this need to bring life back into the world. The need to have a child that carries on some part of me long after I’m gone. It strikes me sometimes and it feels overpowering. Then it is gone and I forget I ever cared.”

Malik sighed. “But it comes more now.”

Altair’s smile was so deceptively innocent, his shoulders slumped and straightened like an embarrassed boy. “There are more women to notice me now. If you were not so vigilant at driving them away I might have been claimed by more than one.”

“I would rip their hearts from their chests,” Malik said. Because-he-would, because he-knew-how and everyone in (the world) Masyaf knew it. 

Altair relaxed forward, onto his knees and then over Malik. He pushed Malik until he was flat on his back and their bodies were flush together. The weight of Altair’s guilt was far heavier than his body even as it pressed Malik into the bed beneath him. Altair’s arms around his back were clinging to the promise made by a far different man in far different circumstances. But the comfort was raw-and-real and Malik stroked his fingers on Altair’s skin and accepted the unspoken regret.

\--

Malik’s first (and only) wish was as simple as: “I want children. Do not attempt to play tricks, Djinn. Give Altair the children he desires.”

The Djinn was wearing a young-man’s body but it was still the same. Age had not dulled its eyes or the grinning superiority in its voice. “Children must have a mother, bird. Could you do this? Could you change your flesh into a woman’s and birth the bastards Altair craves?”

“Altair could hardly transform into a woman. Surely someone at Masyaf would notice when their beloved mentor went missing and a gawky woman took his place.”

“You do not want to,” the Djinn said.

“No,” Malik said, “but I would rather become a woman and birth his _bastards_ as you say than allow some woman to perform the miracle for him. Altair is a fool and he would follow her to the end of the world out of gratitude. I will not lose him.”

Oh-and-how the Djinn laughed. “You have done well, bird. I will grant your wish.”

\--

It simply was that one morning, Malik woke up with three children sleeping in his bed and Altair standing across the room with the most aghast and horrified look on his face. His fingers were scratching at the space just behind his ears.

“It put something into my head,” Altair said, “it feels like my skull has been cracked and filled with things.” 

Malik looked at the children—naked babies and one boy nearly two years old (also naked). They were Altair’s children, blessed with his face and the light color of his skin save for the smallest of the two younger boys. There were not false memories knocking around in his head but the certainty that this gift had come from the Djinn himself. 

But Altair was retching in the corner as his body fought against the (unnatural) memories. When the sickness passed and the boys woke, Altair was bright-with-delight at his sudden fatherhood.

He named their sons Darim, Sef and Tazim.

\--

Their family grew in the passing years. The boys grew sturdy and steady and strong. Malik fell in love with them the same as Altair, protected and guided them as his parents had once done for him. (And perhaps, once or twice when the boys returned with bloody wounds, worried over how he had once killed-and-eaten his own brother.)

\--

Altair left Masyaf in 1217 with Darim at his side. Malik did not follow but stay to guard Masyaf from invasions and attacks. It was not a choice they came by lightly, not something that was agreed upon in a single night but over the course of months and throughout shouting fits and fights that should have shattered the stones that built their home. It was Sef-and-Tazim that persuaded him in the end. His children that knew nothing of the eagle their father had once been and only of the steady man he had become. 

“I will return to you,” Altair said. His hand was around the back of Malik’s neck and his forehead was pressed against Malik’s. There was more promise in his voice than there had ever been before. “I do not know what I would do without you, bird.”

“Yet you leave to find out,” Malik said. He sighed and relented. “Safety and peace.”

“I love you,” Altair said again, “I will return to you.”

\--

But years had passed and Altair’s return had been halted and delayed. In his absence, unrest festered and Abbas seized control from him through the murder of his child. Malik was trapped beneath the ground.

\--

It was always going to end. Malik pinned to the ground with his arms tied fast behind his back and Abbas’ floating voice over his head rising in smugness. The vicious victory he meant to saw from Malik’s death. There was no fight left in the weak stretch of Malik’s body. There was no hope to be found in the world.

Altair had not returned to him. He closed his eyes and thought of the sky—open and wide.

\--

“Oh, little bird,” was the watery-little-voice lick-lapping at his left ear. The whole room seemed to have gone dim between the rise of the sword and the inevitable fall of it. The Djinn was crouched across his back in its true form. Its fingers digging into the floor just in front of his face as the heat of its body left a sweaty imprint across his back. “You are far too glorious to come to this miserable end. It is time I fulfilled a promise I have been lax in keeping.” Then his hand glowed blue-like-fire just as the sword landed against Malik’s flesh and there was a terrible rending pain.

\--

Then there was air-and-light-and-sky. There was a great soaring rise of _freedom_. Malik was mad with the power of it, the motion of his restored wings as they cut through the air. The feeling of gliding over the tiny little world with its tiny little concerns. He was whole and young again.

\--

Malik found his human in a bloody spot of grass. He found his human screaming injustice at the world with bodies bearing mortal wounds all around him and the golden glint of the apple a useless lump in the grass at his knees. Their children were not there; Abbas was not among the dead. It was only Altair and the head of the man that Malik had been once.

But birds were not made to feel the things that men felt. The pain was not as acute to him now. The loneliness and the worry was not as great as it had been. Malik landed on a body to Altair’s left with intentional lack of grace and mewled at him. He stepped-stepped across the grass to nip at his bloody knuckles in deep reproach. The human was making such a disgraceful scene. 

Then again, that his human had not come to him when Malik was still a man. Then again, that his human had used the apple as the terrible weapon it was. Then again that his human was still staring at him as if he did not understand. And again because the human’s hands were in his feathers and his voice was a choked-off-sob gutted from the center of his chest.

“You stupid bird,” Altair said. 

\--

It-started-with his human: gawky, lanky and prone to falling. It ended with his human: aged and gray and prone to rambling. They had grown too old for the world together. Altair was talking-talking when he sat in his library with his failing heart growing heavy and cold in his chest. He was talking-talking with his hand on Malik and his eyes closing. He was mumbling-stumbling-still and silent in the darkness of the room. And Malik rested against his body as it cooled and followed after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
